14 DAY TRIAL // The long-awaited Google Chrome Web Store is now live and available to everyone using the English version of the browser. Paid apps can be bought only in the US, for now, but anyone can install the free web applications. It launches with 500 apps and plenty of big-name partners like the New York Times and EA Games.
"Today the Chrome Web Store is open for business. Developers have already started uploading apps, and we expect the number to grow over time. Right now the store is only available in the U.S., but will expand to many countries and currencies early next year," Linus Upson, VP Engineering and Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, announced.
"The store will be featured prominently in Chrome, helping people discover great apps and developers reach millions of users around the world," they added.
The Chrome Web Store works with Google Chrome 8 and higher. All you have to do is to visit the store and pick from one of the hundreds of apps available now. Click install and you're ready to go.
The new apps will show up in the New Tab Page enabling users to launch and manage them with a few clicks. Because the apps are just plain web pages everything will work out of the box.
In fact, many of the apps will work in Mozilla Firefox 4 or any other browser with strong support for HTML5 and related technologies.
The apps in the Web Store now range from plain links to existing websites, so 'installing' is pretty much the same as bookmarking the website, to web applications built from the ground up for Chrome.
The New York Times app, showcased on stage by Google, looks very much like something you'd see on an iPad. It comes with several customizable themes and looks nothing like the site.
What's more, it's available while offline as well so, even if you don't have an internet connection at one point, you can still browse and read the articles.
Some may be a little disappointed and may point out that many of Chrome's apps are already available and are nothing more than glorified websites. But that's missing the point of the Web Store.
Google didn't launch the Chrome Web Store for people to create a whole new breed of applications, its goal is simply to make it easier for users to find good apps and for developers to showcase and sell their creations.
Unlike on the wild, open web, the Web Store provides a curated experience where it easy to see how popular and trustworthy a web app really is. This is especially important for paid apps.
Not many users are willing to pay to access some app or website they've never heard of before, but the same app in the Web Store will have a much better chance of finding an audience.
While the Web Store is live now, it looks like it won't get the full PR support until Chrome 9 lands. The beta is about to launch in a matter of days now so it shouldn't be long now.