Google has acquired online collaboration startup JotSpot, a purchase sure to get speculation about Google Office going yet again.

The announcement was made Tuesday via separate postings on Google's and JotSpot's company blogs.

"As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention," wrote JotSpot CEO and co-founder Joe Kraus on the Google blog. "We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online."

No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. JotSpot's systems will now make the transition to Google's infrastructure, and sign-ups are suspended until that transition is complete.

JotSpot lets users collaborate on online documents, and the company offers both free and paid versions. JotSpot 2.0 launched this summer, and the new version allows users to create structured pages with photo galleries, file repositories, spreadsheets, calendars and documents.

At first blush, JotSpot's collaborative focus seems a good match for Google's Office-like apps, such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The free and collaborative nature of Google's apps puts Google in a good competitive position versus Microsoft, which has yet to make a big push in online collaboration. Microsoft currently offers an application called Windows Live Writer Beta, but has yet to announce online versions of its other traditional office products.

Google released Google Spreadsheets in June. Google purchased startup Writely.com, one of the more popular Web 2.0 office applications, last March.

Focusing on collaborative products may also help Google attract more users to Internet apps, which is one of the search company's goals. The more people who work online, the larger the audience for Google advertising.