14 DAY TRIAL // One of the big announcements during the second day of the Google I/O developer conference was that the Chrome Web Store was going global. Launched in early December 2010 in the US, the Web Store will now be available in many local markets.
The Chrome Web Store has been quite successful, Google says, 17 million applications have been installed in the first three months. The Web Store has been available around the world, but only in English.
But Google has even bigger plans, it will eventually make the Web Store available to other browsers, though the company isn't providing too many details for this.
Along with making it available in 41 languages, the Chrome Web Store is also getting support for in-app payments. The aim is to make it easy for developers to implement payment options, either for microstransactions or for the full version of the app.
"Today at Google I/O, we launched the developer API of Google In-App Payments for the web. In-App Payments enables any web application to receive payments from users and keep them engaged in your application," Amit Fulay, Product Manager and Mikhail Seregine, Software Engineer at Google wrote.
"It is available to all US developers in sandbox today and will be followed by a consumer launch and an international rollout over the summer," they explained.
The aim for Google was to make the entire process as fast and as simple as possible. Transactions don't require users to leave an app, everything happens inside. The API is available to apps in the Web Store but also for any other app on the web.
Anyone that has ever used Google Checkout, including in the Android Market, the eBookstore or to rent a movie on YouTube, will be able to complete the transaction in only a few steps.
But it's easy for developers as well, on the technical side, the payments API only requires two calls, one to initiate the payment and the second to confirm the notification of the payment.
On the business side, Google is only taking a fixed 5 percent take from any transaction. Other than that there are no fixed fees, no initial costs or minimum monthly transactions.