Chrome Web Store

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Perhaps in a move to more effectively compete against Apple’s popular application superstore in iTunes, Google is introducing an open market place for Web applications later this year, with its Chrome Webstore. Currently, the popular choice is Apple’s App Store, which allows users of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad find and download apps from the iTunes stores. Google also features the recently updated Android Market, which offers applications for that mobile platform; the Chrome Webstore is similar to Android’s App Market, but this is for Web applications.

Features of the Google Chrome Webstore are revealed in a YouTube video, with the company giving very few details as to the actual launch date, pricing schemes and look of the store. Its purpose is to enable users to search for and find a huge number of apps from hundreds of thousands of developers. Developers of PC apps are excited to have a new platform from which to launch and hopefully sell their apps, ranging from games to shopping, locators, maps, measuring devices, recipe finders, social media widgets, stock ...
... market updates, list-makers, fun toys, photography tools, uploading and downloading shortcut applications…a veritably endless range of marketing potential and emerging innovations. Developers will benefit from an audience of millions upon whom to launch their new apps, with the ability to sell their wares through Google’s secure checkout and payment system.

All major platforms will eventually be supported, including Windows, Linux, Mac and currently featuring Google’s Chrome OS as the platform of choice. There will be a wide variety of free and pay apps available, and support for 40 languages in 70 countries. One of the criticisms now though, is that currently the store is Chrome-specific, with other platforms set to follow. At its launch, benefits for Chrome users will feature regular Web apps, the store’s FAQ stating, “they can be used by anyone using a modern browser that supports these Web technologies.”

End-users will have access to the Chrome Webstore later this year, according to Google, with developers scrambling to meet support deadlines for the launch in which they’ll hopefully be included. App developers will be invited to submit their apps later this year, before the opening of the Chrome Web Store. Developers can find a developer discussion group online for blog entries, important dates and deadlines, and current news of developments in the launch. There’s extensive preparatory documentation available for developers, listing requirements for listing their apps, and what support features are necessary. One of the requirements is that the apps be able to be used across most of the current popular browser platforms, and on multiple operating systems.

Google’s team of Chrome Webstore developers are being deliberately vague as to the launch date, perhaps due to missed deadlines of major developments, updates and new products in the past.

The capability will exist for one-click installs of the web applications from the Chrome Webstore, which adds a shortcut for quick accessibility of the app.