Google Apps Marketplace: Google Launches Its Own App Store

Google has officially announced that the Google Apps Marketplace is now open for business. This is basically an application store for Google Apps users to find the cloud-based applications they need to help their organizations run better. It’s a comprehensive directory of apps populated by over 50 companies across a range of businesses.

Today, we’re making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps

Even though thousands of businesses have moved into the cloud to avoid the headache of dealing with maintaining software themselves, there have still been some gaps. You had your Google Apps on the one hand, but still needed other applications to do stuff like payroll and project management. More often than not, these other applications didn’t integrate directly with Google Apps, making things difficult for the users.

With the Google Apps Marketplace, it’s now easier for developers to integrate their existing offerings into Google Apps. Not only that, but it’s also simpler for administrators to deploy these applications to their organization. Integrating with technologies like OpenID and oAuth makes the user experience seamless. Developers are free to extend Google Apps functionality and Google doesn’t bear the burden of doing so on it’s own.

Apps of note include Manymoon for project management and productivity (which we covered previously) and Intuit Online Payroll to run payroll, pay taxes, and allow employees to access paystubs. Making these apps available to your company is as simple as a few clicks. You control what type of access the application has to your employees data via the familiar Google Apps interface. You no longer have to worry about software maintenance, upgrades, syncing data, or tracking multiple accounts. All of this is taken care of automatically.

Some of the apps are free (including Manymoon) and some offer a trial period. In addition to the products available, you can also access services and training through the marketplace. Google itself will handle billing for these apps so, if you’re a developer, expect to fork over 20% to Google (Apple takes 30% in it’s App store). This is more than worth it given the exposure your application will receive.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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