Office Mobile for iPad? How About Quickoffice for Free, Says Google

Google has decided to make Quickoffice, its mobile app for viewing and editing Microsoft Office files, free to anyone who has a Google account.

Quickoffice, a competitor to Microsoft's own Office Mobile, previously cost upwards of $14.99 or $19.99 to anyone who did not have a Business subscription to the Mountain View giant's online services. (Business accounts got Quickoffice free since the spring of this year.)

Now, if you have a Google account, you can download it for free on iPhones and Android devices, and, as a bonus, Google is offering expanded Google Drive storage for two years if you download the app soon.

That offer is only available for a limited time - a sign that Google wants to drum up its users to either switch to Quickoffice from other productivity apps, or get users to start editing Office files on-the-go natively through the app. After September 26, according to Google, its offer of an extra 10GB of Google Drive storage expires. According to the Google enterprise blog post announcing the move, making the app free, all users have to do to get the free 10GB extra storage is to "sign in to your Google Account from the new Quickoffice for Android or iOS."

Google bought the Quickoffice mobile app about a year ago, according to CNET, in June 2012. Ever since, it has been expanding the app's availability. Quick office lets users create, view and edit Microsoft Office documents like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files on Android tablets and phones, as well as iPhones and, importantly, iPads.

Native iPad editing of Office files is something that Microsoft has been tenaciously trying to avoid with its own Office Mobile app system, which is built in on Windows Phone OS, and is available for Android and iOS as phone apps.

Microsoft, of course, is badly losing the tablet wars between its own Surface lineup and the iPad, and so supporting a native full-resolution app for iPad is the last thing on Microsoft's to do list. Apple iPad users can run Office Mobile, but it's a non-native version, scaled up from the iPhone app. And anyone using Office Mobile on Android or iOS first has to have an Office 365 subscription, which can cost anywhere from $80 to $125, depending on the package you buy.

Next to that, free Quickoffice will look quite appealing. The app is integrated with Google Drive so storing and accessing files is easy, and Google of course wants long-time Office users to get used to Drive, because Google Docs, Sheets and Slides - Google's own suite of Office competitor apps - also is integrated with Drive. "Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is still the easiest way to share and work together, and we're working every day to make the files you convert look better," said Google's announcement. "But sometimes the people you work with haven't gone Google yet."

They say you catch more flies with honey, and to get those people who haven't "gone Google yet," Google is betting you catch more customers with free than restrictions. You can pick up Quickoffice at the Google Play Store for Android and the iTunes store for iOS.