Google recently announced plans to make the QuickOffice application free for both iOS and Android powered smartphones. Google admitted in a blog post that not everyone has “gone Google” up to this point. Leading up to this week’s announcement, Google has offered the QuickOffice app for free to Google Apps customers, but not it will be available to anyone that has a Google account. If you are thinking about getting the application, you can download it for free and if you hurry, you will even get an extra 10GB of free online storage for two years, if you download it by the 26th.
QuickOffice was picked up by Google in 2012 and was really purchased so that Microsoft did not have the stronghold that it does on all the Office type programs on the market. The application has been slowly getting integrated through the Google Drive program and is really only meant to be a quick viewer/editor for Office documents and spreadsheets. As of right now, QuickOffice will only work on documents that are stored within Google Drive. If you are using the upgraded QuickOffice Pro or HD versions, then you will have to download and install the new QuickOffice app.
The QuickOffice app will also allow users to create .ZIP folders within a Drive account, as well as view any Powerpoint or Excel type spreadsheets, especially on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The app can currently be downloaded from the Google Play store and comes with a widget for quick access to all of your favorite files located on your Drive account. Google is doing whatever it can to keep customers from moving their documents to any program that is run by Microsoft. With Microsoft Office around for so long, many users have just been used to dealing with the program and do not know there might be other options out there.
According to the QuickOffice listing in the Google Play store, the “app from Google lets you create and edit Microsoft® Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations on your Android phone and tablet. Sign in with your Google Account to save work in Google Drive, which gives you up to 15GB of free storage and lets you access your files from any mobile device or computer.” With more than 4,000 ratings and a 3.9 out of 5 stars, it looks like the Android community is standing behind the app as an option.
