Microsoft acquired Liveloop, a software startup that develops Office collaboration tools. Its first product is the Liveloop for PowerPoint, a plugin that allows people to collaborate and share PowerPoint presentations online easily.
Liveloop converts presentations into Web URLS without installing any software. Users can view and share the presentations from any devices such as PCs or smartphones.
On its website, Liveloop indicated that its objective is to “bring all of the benefits of real-time collaboration to the 750-million user Office platform.”
Microsoft confirms the acquisition
Microsoft confirmed the acquisition but did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.
A spokesperson for the software giant said, “Microsoft is excited to welcome the talented team from LiveLoop to help build great collaboration across Office applications, as part of our strategy and vision to reinvent productivity.”
Microsoft acquired other productivity firms under its current CEO Satya Nadella. The software giant purchased Acompli, an e-mail app developer and Sunrise, a mobile calendar app developer last December and February, respectively.
LiveLoop will be shut down on April 24
Liveloop posted a notice on its website that its operation would be shut down permanently on April 24, 2015. The firm already disabled its new user registration and presentation upload.
All existing Liveloop users were advised to retrieve their data before April 24. Liveloop will permanently delete all user data and presentation.
Amal Doral is the founder of Liveloop, which was launched in 2010. The startup made a presentation at the DEMO conference, which was co-hosted by VentureBeat in 2011.
Back then, Doral said, “We don’t believe that software-as-a-service (SaaS) needs to be set in a Web browser — products like Google Docs are severely limited in features and performance. Other startups within this space have not built real-time collaboration technology (DocVerse, Offisync, Versly), so their collaboration experience is hampered. We achieve the best of both worlds.”
