It'll be online and open for business any time now, said the Wall Street Journal a while ago. It's the Google store for business apps. App stores are where all the action is these days. Google already has an online store if you haven't noticed; but they don't sell anything high-tech there; they just sell Google fanboy merchandise like coffee mugs and T-shirts. The Google business app store will be much better - they are going to be selling apps built by independent developers, that are supposed to be add-ons to Gmail, Google talk, Google Docs, Google Chrome and other Google applications. In general, they could be to help the business user roll in fancier word processing, better security, and so on when she uses free Google products for their business, instead of pricey Microsoft stuff. If you've seen the Android app store, you probably have a good idea how the Google store will work.
The model is simple - the third-party app designer sets a price on her app, and posts it on the Google store for business apps. Any time that a customer downloads a copy, Google takes its cut, and hands the rest over to the designer. It would be really neat if this idea actually took off. Gmail and Google Docs us are so widely used that there would be a certain market, and depending on how well the software designers dream up new concepts, things could get really active.
The whole app concept is really catching ons. Mozilla has a gazillion add-ons, though they are all free. Who would have thought that you could have so many add-on ideas for a simple browser? If they try hard, designers could probably come up with some pretty good concepts. But if you think about it, a Google store for tech stuff isn't all that new. The Google Solutions Marketplace has been online for quite a while now - ever since 2008. One example of the kind of thing offered there is a service that will help small companies move all their records over to the Cloud. But you see, they don't actually make or sell apps on the Google Solutions marketplace. They merely sell services that will help companies use Google products better.
Perhaps it would be better if instead of opening a whole new Google store for business apps, they just modified the existing Solutions Marketplace to sell the new stuff too. And while they're at it, they could make Google Checkout handle the payments, and help third-party businesses get a proper distribution channel, perhaps using Google development tools. All of Google's efforts in the app area, aim to promote Google's Cloud initiatives properly among business users. The County of Los Angeles for example, recently declared that it was going to cut costs by moving all of its records and work, to Google's servers. That was a deal worth $7 million to Google. And it was worth immeasurably more in cementing its reputation as a serious place for business.
Would you believe that Cloud computing has been around for 50 years now? GE and IBM would put down dedicated lines to business offices, and handle all their computing tasks over at GE's and IBM's facilities. Today Google just has to bring in the DoubleClick Ad Exchange idea, connect buyers and sellers, offer support for Salesforce AppExchange, and any single-person business should be up and running.