With the release of Apple’s Mac App store, it’s worth mentioning that Google unveiled an App store for web apps last month. Similar to the iOS and the Mac stores, Google is hosting a platform for developers to sell (or give away) their applications.
There are some high profile newspapers present in the marketplace, like USAToday and the NYTimes, as well as Pandora, MailChimp, and of course: MafiaWars. The majority of applications are less well known, but since “installing” them is fairly easy, it can’t hurt to give them a shot.
Free Apps
All of the Apps currently listed as “Featured” or “Popular” are free. This almost makes the term store misleading, since it’s more of a free clearing house. Even the “paid” applications don’t normally have a price directly attached to them, but instead use “in app” payments.
Streamlined Installation
One of the biggest advantages to this type of marketplace is the streamlined installation process, even though the applications were developed by different companies. After handing over your email address, it takes you straight into the application without any other account setup. I took a few screenshots while installing an application:
Conclusions
Google has basically ported Apple’s model to the web, which could be a game changer for web-apps and consumers in the future. But presently, it’s a good way to find average, often half-baked applications with a few gems here and there. It reminds me of the early days of the iPhone app store, where you could look at almost all the apps in 30 minutes. Perhaps in a few months we’ll think of the Google Webstore as the defacto place to get webapps.
Eric J says
Most of the “apps” are just links to the website with no additional functionality, for example the pandora app has no html5 goodness like desktop notifications.
Stephen Bateman says
Agreed. But now with a platform that can leverage those capabilities, I imagine developers will start to use them more aggressively.
BenJPickett says
I see this as the platform of apps for their Chrome OS. Currently it’s not looking like a real game changer in the desktop space. It simply feels like a way to search for websites you want to book mark, instead of adding any real useful extensions to Chrome making it a more powerful, viable browser.
Stephen Bateman says
I don’t see this as being in the “desktop space” at all?
Perhaps they’re a little early to the party, but I expect some web-app store will reign supreme at some point.