Published on the 30/11/2010 | Written by Newsdesk

Google today threw a curveball Microsoft’s way by announcing that business and consumer users of its cloud-based Google Docs can soon connect easily with their Microsoft Word documents.

Google acquired a company called DocVerse last year and today Google, having tweaked it, renamed it Cloud Connect. 

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. Because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version. Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click, as they can with Google Docs.

Recently Microsoft announced pricing for its own cloud based Word system. Google Docs is free and the new plug- in, presently being tested by business users, will be available to everyone using Google shortly. 

Google says that it means users can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.