Google buys JotSpot to add Web applications

Google Inc. said it bought JotSpot, a Silicon Valley start-up that helped pioneer the market for Web-based business software such as spreadsheets, in the latest move by the Web search leader into an area dominated by Microsoft Corp.

Joe Kraus, chief executive of Mountain View, Calif.-based JotSpot, said his company had agreed to the acquisition after a series of moves by Google to provide competing software.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Three-year-old JotSpot had developed a series of online productivity software programs that offer many of the functions of Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheets. But instead of running on individual computers, JotSpot applications are delivered as Web-based services.