Mountain View, California — Just as we reported last month, Google has finally opened up a new online app store for Google Apps called Google Apps Marketplace today, continuing its push into the enterprise, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google’s own online applications.
The new Google Apps Marketplace becomes live tonight with 50 applications presently available from third-party vendors, said Chris Vander Mey, a senior product manager for Google.
The new Apps Marketplace intends to allow independent software developers to sell their products directly to around more than 25 million users of Google’s suite of Internet-based applications, and more than 2 million businesses using Google Apps with a large range of different third-party applications in the cloud, it announced Tuesday, opening a Google Apps Marketplace that could be a commercial counterpart to Apple’s wildly popular app store for consumers.
“What we discovered as we spoke to these customers is that they asked for more apps,” said Vander Mey. “They want a specific app for a specific vertical… We want to help them but one of the challenges has been that as you get more apps, there is more hassle. These apps do not naturally work together. They have to share data and they do not do it natively.”
(Credit: Google Apps customers now have a wide variety of third-party applications they can integrate into their individual Google Apps domains.)
For a $100 one-time fee and a 20 percent share of the revenue, Google will offer a deck where developers could to sell their own software products that would work with and augment Google applications such as Gmail, Calendar or spreadsheets.
The program enables merging with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites and Calendar. All said, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap and Zoho.
“Tonight, what we are doing is we are launching a business-to-business marketplace for Google Apps users, where the idea is that we want to help users get more applications for Google Apps from third-party developers,” said Vander Mey, in a statement. Among the applications is a small business payroll system from Intuit, called Intuit Online Payroll, and Box.net’s self-named content management system.
Google engineering director David Glazer speaking to developers at the event and watching a live stream on YouTube that Google Apps Marketplace could open a huge new market for them. It will allow developers “to begin making money selling apps to your customers in the cloud, who are also our customers in the cloud,” Glazer said.
For developers, the Google App Marketplace could be as big or a bigger opportunity than the Apple App Store, “because it is adapted to businesses rather than individual consumers,” said Kevin Nilson, a Silicon Valley software developer who attended the announcement.
Users can connect to an application via the UI in Google applications, offering advantages like single sign-on and sharing of data between Google Apps and third-party applications. Centralized administration also is featured.
“As you buy applications, they are automatically incorporated into your domain,” Vander Mey said. Applications can be installed within a domain via a four-click process. Google Apps Marketplace could be compared to the Apple App Store for iPhone applications or the Salesforce.com Force.com cloud application platform, said Vander Mey.
Installing a new application is extremely easy. According to Google, all you have to do is follow the following 4 steps:
- Click “Add it now”
- Agree to the vendor’s Terms of Service
- Grant access to the data that the app is requesting (some apps require data access, some do not — only grant access to apps you trust)
- Turn it on and start enjoying your increased productivity
For more information, check out the video overview below.