[UPDATE: Google confirmed the deal in a blog post, which you can read below, as well as in interviews BoomTown did today with execs at DocVerse and Google.]

Continuing its acquisition spree, Google has snapped up DocVerse, a start-up that allows users of Microsoft Office documents to collaborate in real-time on the Web, said several sources.

Sources said the price was in the $25 to $30 million range.

Founded by two ex-Microsoft (MSFT) execs in 2008, Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui, San Francisco-based DocVerse has raised only $1.3 million in venture funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.

It’s yet another shot across Microsoft’s software bow by Google (GOOG), along with a range of other digital arenas such as cloud computing and mapping.

Google has been pushing its own cloud-based Google Docs, but it struggles against the Office juggernaut. Thus, a link with Office via DocVerse is a smart move.

Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager on the Google Apps team said that while some perceive the search giant as trying to compete directly with Office (a claim I openly scoffed at during the interview), Google did hear from customers that it wanted cloud-based functionality with Office.

“We heard from customers that there is a great need for help in the cloud,” he said. “This acquisition helps users move over the to cloud and expands our product.”

DocVerse CEO Sinha said his small company–under 20 employees, who will be moving down to the Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., immediately–had been talking to Google for a while.

“We were gaining traction in the product in large enterprises…so, it made sense, because we have a vision of a world of Web-based collaboration,” he said.

While Sinha said he admired what Microsoft had done with Office, he noted there is a need for more, and a hook-up with the powerful Google will help DocVerse do that sooner.

“Microsoft is doing a lot of great things for its customers who use its stack of software,” he said. “But we see a whole other world interested in the Web-based approach that is not being served very well right now.”

For its part, Microsoft has committed itself to moving its hugely popular productivity suite–which includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel–into the cloud, in order to protect its software hegemony.

Why? Simultaneous group-editing and collaboration online is clearly the future of Office.

In fact, yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a significant statement related to cloud computing in a speech, noting, “This is the bet for the company. For the cloud, we’re all in.”

In an interesting side note, this is the third company that Harrison Metal has invested in that has been acquired by Google over the last several months. Other sales have included AdMob for $750 million and Aardvark for $50 million.

There had been a post in TechCrunch back in December that the deal was nearly done, but it was apparently not completed until now.

Here is the blog post on the deal from Google:

Google Docs welcomes DocVerse

Friday, March 05, 2010 at 10:48 AM

?The future of productivity applications is in the cloud. We’ve always believed the web is the best platform for creating and sharing information, and Google Docs has already helped millions of people become more productive. But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.
?
For example, we recently made it possible to use Google Docs to store and share any type of file that you have on your computer, not just the ones you create online. Today we’re excited to announce another step towards seamless interoperability: we have acquired DocVerse.

DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they’ve enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.

A huge “welcome” to the DocVerse team and their customers! Current DocVerse users can keep using the product as usual, though we’ve suspended new sign-ups until we’re ready to share what’s next. Stay tuned!

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager, Google Apps team

NPR Mobile Web has been redesigned for better cross-platform functionality. And its station list has been expanded beyond the 55 it had at launch to include all NPR member stations.

NPR News app, which should be available to Android users later this month, is similar in user functionality to the broadcaster’s iPhone application. But unlike the iPhone app, NPR News app for Android is open and can be customized and improved upon by member stations.

“With the Android app, we can let the stations incorporate their own apps into ours,” Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s SVP/GM of digital media, told Paid Content. “Some stations are more advanced digitally than others. We’re working with them about becoming more robust providers of local news, which will keep them relevant. And we can share our programming and theirs on one app. That expands the opportunities for all of us.”

Interesting, given the recent flap over Google Voice for iPhone, which Apple (AAPL) hasn’t yet allowed into its iTunes App Store because it “appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail.”

How is Vonage’s (VG) app different? Its features and functionality are certainly very similar to those of Google Voice.

Apple won’t say, but the company did tell the Associated Press that Vonage’s app falls under the same category as other VoIP applications that have already been approved for the iPhone.

Yahoo is set to unveil a major marketing campaign to reset advertiser and consumer perception of the long-troubled company during Advertising Week in New York, which starts a week from tomorrow.

According to numerous sources BoomTown has spoken to about the campaign, Yahoo (YHOO) is–at least with advertisers–going to focus on stressing the size and scale of the Internet giant.

The details of the plan will be made public Tuesday, Sept. 22, at a press conference.

It will take place immediately after a keynote speech–titled “Yahoo’s Consumer Revolution…Round II”–that the company’s new CMO, Elisa Steele, is set to deliver on the second day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference.

MIXX is a two-day event, run by IAB, focused specifically on online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is also going to be attending Advertising Week–during which all the major players in the advertising business gather in Manhattan for a series of events–for a plethora of meetings with big Yahoo clients.

It is likely she and several other senior Yahoo execs will be at the press conference, sources said.

That press event will also include Penny Baldwin, a well-known industry exec Yahoo hired as its SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management in July.

The main message Bartz is set to deliver is that Yahoo is a powerhouse unlike any others on the Web when it comes to online display advertising.

And, in fact, Yahoo–despite all the internal and external turmoil it has undergone in recent years–remains one of the largest sites on the Internet, and is the top player in what is also called graphical advertising, as well as online media and communications.

“The whole push seems to be to remind people of vibrancy of the brand and exactly how huge its reach is,” said one person who has seen parts of the presentation. “It is less Yahoo is back than Yahoo has never left.”

Sources also noted that Yahoo is likely to stick to its plan to push the idea of “your home on the Web” to consumers, which I had previously posted about earlier this summer.

The idea of the Silicon Valley icon being the key hub destination for Internet users does dovetail with pushing its size to advertisers–major marketing messages that will also likely cost a pretty penny.

They will have to–Microsoft (MSFT) has been in the midst of a $100 million campaign for its new Bing search site and will likely spend more when it unveils updates to the service, dubbed Bing 2.0–within the next few weeks.

The company showed the changes it showed to its own employees last week, which was the subject of much tweeting on Twitter.

Yahoo will apparently give more specifics as to the spend for the marketing push at the press conference.

But, many sources said, the company is already out in the advertising market now, buying tens of millions of dollars in advertising online and offline to hawk Yahoo in print, on television and elsewhere.

(Full disclosure: Sources said that campaign will include The Wall Street Journal network, which includes this site.)

“It’s dramatic,” said one source about the marketing outlay.

Since she got to Yahoo, Bartz has continually stressed the need to promote Yahoo products and services more, including in an interview last week on CNBC (you can see that longish video here).

And, in the July earnings call for Yahoo, Bartz said: “In addition, we’re hard at work on plans to reposition our most valuable asset: Yahoo’s brand. Our Q3 plans include an initial wave of incremental marketing spend which will increase substantially into Q4 and next year.”

Also, in a Q&A in the same call, she added more about the long-term nature of the spending on branding:

“The branding and our whole campaign of advertising is just starting; however you have to understand that this is an ongoing campaign so it’s not transient at least for the next year or so. We’re really going to move to reposition the Yahoo brand and Yahoo Company, so right now, consider that as cost that’s in the system.”

What Bartz and other Yahoo execs will likely stress less is search, due to the search deal Yahoo struck in July with Microsoft in which the software giant will take over the back-end technology and Yahoo will sell search ads for both companies.

The company will compete with both Microsoft and Google (GOOG) in garnering the search market still, once the partnership is approved by regulators, with Yahoo focusing on differentiating itself via innovative user interface, design, features and functionality.

For free.

Which says quite a bit about the competitive pressures Microsoft (MSFT) is feeling right now, particularly from Google (GOOG), which first challenged Office two years ago and is now taking on Windows as well. “The fact that Microsoft is developing it at all is a response to Google,” said analyst Matt Rosoff of Directions On Microsoft. “This is a move that they probably wouldn’t have made if they didn’t have to, but there is enough competition bubbling up that they thought they needed a response.”

And a measured response that trumps Google’s offerings, which Office Web Apps will do on a few levels. First, it’s free of user-separation anxiety. Companies attached to Outlook, Word and whatnot will find in Office Web Apps the same familiar interfaces and functionality. No need to grudgingly replicate the Office experience as Google recently had to do with it Outlook synchronization tool for Apps, because Office Web Apps is Office.

Second, Microsoft’s approach offers enterprise an on-premises hosting option. Which means companies that aren’t comfortable running the suite on Microsoft’s remote data centers can run it on their own servers. And, as Gartner (IT) fellow Tom Austin notes, that could do much to distinguish it from Google Apps in the marketplace. “The hybrid hosting model removes a barrier to entry that Google cannot remove, so it is somewhat of a big thing,” Austin told Digital Daily.

“Interesting question is whether this hybrid hosting model is the Lockheed Prop-jet Electra of the era. Lockheed brought out a propjet at the same time Boeing and Douglas were coming out with turbojets (the 707 and DC-8 respectively). Boeing and Douglas won out, of course, but it didn’t help that the Electras had a problem with staying in the air….I am not saying that Microsoft Cloud-Office offering is a prop-jet Electra. I am saying firms will likely opt out of choosing the hybrid model because it’s less effective (like the electra).”

That breathless and swooning introduction aside, ngmoco co-founder Neil Young’s keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today was noteworthy in that it really heralds the arrival of the iPhone as a gaming platform. The GDC is the largest annual gathering of professional videogame developers, so the fact that Young, an Electronic Arts (ERTS) alum turned iPhone developer, delivered his remarks from a stage that will soon host Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima says a lot about the esteem in which game developers hold the device–dismissive comments from Sony (SNE) be damned.

Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is still in its early stages as a gaming platform and make no mistake, it is a viable gaming platform, said Young. And he should know; ngmoco–the developer of popular iPhone game titles like Rolando, Dropship, and Topple–just closed a $10 million second-round of funding after only nine months in business.

“Don’t let the haters tell you it sucks compared to the [Nintendo] DS or the [Sony] PSP,” Young said of the iPhone. “It doesn’t. It’s good. It’s clear that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts, and that’s even more acute when you compare it against the prior generation.” Why?

Unlike its console rivals, the iPhone is always connected, users always carry it, it offers unique features that can’t be found anywhere else–a touchscreen, an accelerometer, connectivity. In this way, said Young, the iPhone is similar to the Nintendo DS. When that device first launched, many thought it would be beaten into whimpering submission by the far more robust PSP. But that never happened. “Nintendo was able to win that battle by combining great software with hardware that it understood very well,” Young said. “If Nintendo made the iPhone, what would they focus on? I think they would build games that could only be on the iPhone. The designs would be progressive, discontinuous, and would have the user and the user’s context always in mind. They would have great underlying game design with native device functionality at the core.”

His point: Graphics and sound alone don’t necessarily make a great app. As Nintendo has shown us with the DS and the Wii, gaming is all about the platform. And Apple has clearly created one to be reckoned with.

A likely explanation. There’s little doubt the botched debut of the new Blackberry Storm undermined RIM’s performance this quarter. But perhaps there’s something more at work here as well–like the quality of RIM’s handsets themselves. “We think an additional factor is a poor reception to the much-anticipated Storm and Bold,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a client note. “We think the Storm has numerous flaws and the functionality of both devices is largely unchanged from previous devices.”

You might be able to get at the desired file if you have previously uploaded it to an online storage or photo-sharing service, or emailed it to yourself. But, in many cases, you could be stuck.