Google acquires Zenter, online slideshow tool

Google has just announced its acquisition of Zenter, a small company that makes software for creating online slideshows--a much rumored, and fully confirmed product Google's CEO Eric Schmidt officially announced a few months ago at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Zenter joins Tonic Systems, another presentation-creation service Google picked up back in April.

Zenter first unveiled its service in mid-March and has since stayed fairly quiet. The service lets users import Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, as well as grab bits of content from all over the Web for making presentations that can be viewed and shared in the Web browser. Users can also create their own live broadcasts, similar to many of the Web-based PowerPoint competitors that have popped up in the last few years.

While Google hasn't announced a timeline of when we can expect to see the official presentation application, as of last week, users of Google's Gmail service have been able to open attached PowerPoint files inside their message windows without having the software installed.