Google is supposed to be negotiating to buying DocVerse, the 2007 start-up whose Office plug-in lets users share and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in real-time both on- and offline, sorta like Zoho and Google Docs.

Tech Crunch claims the sales price is ~$25 million.

DocVerse's founders include managers of Microsoft's SharePoint, SQL Server web strategy and ADO.NET.

Its investors include angel backers of Google, PayPal and Twitter and Baseline Ventures.

The assumption is the collaborative widgetry will go into Google Apps along with technology Google got with its acquisition of AppJet and its EtherPad collaborative word processor.

Google needs to improve Gmail, Google Docs, Google Apps and Google Wave to blow Microsoft and its coming webified Office out of the enterprise.