14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone is building an app store these days. Most have focused on the mobile space, but Google is looking beyond that, fittingly, at Google Apps. The New York Times reports that the search giant is planning to launch a dedicated Apps market place to enable third-party developers to sell their add-ons for Google's suite of enterprise applications.
The new app store could come as early as March. Google already operates a somewhat similar site, dubbed the Google Solutions Marketplace, where users can find various tools and enhancements for Apps or Enterprise Search. The existing site doesn't allow developers to sell those add-ons directly though, which is where the rumored upcoming app store comes in.
Google would not confirm the rumors but indicated that the Marketplace is due for an upgrade. “The Google Solutions Marketplace makes it easy for our customers to connect with an ecosystem of products and professional services,” Google told the NYT. “We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”
The new store will bring much better integration with the Google products and will be dedicated to Google Apps. The biggest change, of course, is that developers will get to sell their solutions, with Google taking a revenue cut, which is typically in the 30 percent range. The store is also likely to integrate Google Checkout, the company's payment system which has failed to gain too much traction so far.
Google already has an app store, the Android Market place which it launched in response to Apple's App Store success. The Marketplace has picked up some Steam but is still far behind its main rival. The company has been focusing on the enterprise front pushing its Google Apps online suite as an alternative to established products from Microsoft or IBM. It has been gaining some ground in the market boasting that more than 20 million people use Google Apps around the world, but that is still a drop in the bucket compared to its competitors.