The Google Apps Marketplace, which lets third-party software developers sell applications that integrate with Google Apps, turns one month old April 9. The search engine and collaboration software maker is expected to release some usage statistics to show how successful the platform has been to date. Google has been busy promoting the Marketplace further since its launch. The company has released the Gmail contextual gadgets API; established a YouTube channel and hosted a series of Marketplace-related posts from third party developers.
The Google Apps Marketplace turns one month old April 9
and Google is expected to release some usage statistics to show how successful
the platform has been to date.
Google
launched the Google Apps Marketplace March 9 as a way to let third-party
software developers sell applications that integrate with Google Apps,
including Google Docs, Calendar and the Sites Web publishing app.
Google Apps customers, which include more than 2 million
business and 25 million active users, can
purchase project management apps from Atlassian and Manymoon or billing and
accounting software Intuit, among other services.
One week after the launch, Google Apps Marketplace
Product Manager Chris Vander Mey described the reception of the Marketplace as "fantastic."
Vander Mey told eWEEK that four of its 50 Marketplace partners each installed
1,100 domains to hook into the platform.
That is a testament to the interest and demand for cloud
computing platforms that let programmers infuse business applications with
collaboration apps. Google has been busy promoting the Marketplace further since
its launch.
The company has
released the Gmail contextual gadgets API to show previews of documents,
videos, photos, right inside Gmail messages;
established a YouTube channel for third party vendors to publish videos about
their apps and
hosted a series of posts about Marketplace from third party developers.
Google plans some Marketplace-related
sessions for the Google I/O event for next month. Tomorrow, Google is expected to release updated figures
on the platform, which opens Google Apps to third party programmers wider than
ever before.
David Glazer, the director of engineering for Google who
is overseeing the Marketplace, told eWEEK Google created the Marketplace
because it realizes it can't build everything, such as project management and
payroll apps, itself.
"There's a tremendous amount of talent that wants to
be build innovative software out there in areas where we won't ever be building
that software," Glazer said.
Glazer also said Google was quite comfortable opening up its Google APIs to let other businesses build apps with them.
"You give people freedom with the ability to connect
and guidelines for good practices and you get out of the way," Glazer
said. "It's the kind of business-oriented open standards that lets customers
buy the software they want from the vendors they trust, control the experiences
they give their users, but with no control over how those experiences or built
and who builds them. That's something that people are excited to see."
Google, which is charging developers a $100 entrance fee taking
a 20 percent cut from recurring revenues on applications sold in the
Marketplace, won't say how much money it expects to make from the program.
"Our first goal is to give customers and users
better apps and give them apps in the way they're asking for them," Glazer
said. "I expect people will buy more of stuff they like."
Meanwhile, Google has claimed it is not trying to
challenge Salesforce.com in the market for business and collaboration apps markets
in the cloud.
If Google and Salesforce.com are at war, it's a friendly
one. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is scheduled to speak at
Google's Atmosphere 2010 cloud computing event for CIOs April 12.
Benioff was in New York City April 8 to
unveil AppExchange 2 and a new round of beta testing for Salesforce Chatter,
which infuses Salesforce.com apps with social collaboration for enterprise
workers.
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