Google Apps Marketplace

Google's certainly made some enterprise inroads with Google Apps, and now it's opened the door for other cloud-based service providers to build on that success: it's launching Google Apps Marketplace to sell third-party web apps that integrate with the Apps suite.

Google has announced a business-oriented cloud software store which it's calling the Google Apps Marketplace. The service allows businesses using its Google Apps software to install plug-in that allow them to access cloud-based productivity applications.

The Google Apps Marketplace (not to be confused with the company's Android App Market) has launched with offerings from more than 50 companies that includes payroll, project management, contextual information and software development functionality. Once installed, they work just like native Google apps and can access calendars, email, documents and contact data.

The Google Apps Marketplace, launched at a semiannual Google Campfire One event in Mountain View, California, will allow developers to sell software applications to the more than 2 million businesses already using Google Apps such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites.

The idea is that developer partners will be able to create apps however they want, access data from other apps for example, add events to Google Calendar or tap into users' contact lists – with users' permission and integrate their apps into the Google Apps control bar and navigation bar. Meanwhile, businesses that use Google Apps will get access to far more of the applications that are then integrated into the same Google Apps interface and that all work together.

The apps likely to do best in the Google marketplace will solve a user problem and eliminate clicks, says David Glazer, an engineering director at Google. While the fastest-growing segment of Google enterprise customers has been Fortune 1,000 companies, the first users of the marketplace are likely to be younger companies and colleges, he says, which were also the first users of Google Apps.

Google Apps is moving closer to being an integrated corporate dashboard with the announcement tonight of Google Apps Marketplace at a developer event at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google's Apps product is meant to be a web-based replacement for some of Microsoft's most lucrative installed software. Google has announced its Apps Marketplace, where software-as-a-service providers can sell their web-based programs on a per-user cost basis -- all running over the Google Apps infrastructure.

Once that happens, Google and Microsoft will be direct competitors. Until then, Google will slowly nibble at Microsoft's pie. If you have Google Apps running on your domain, now you can install third-party apps that fully integrate with Google’s apps.

Google has debuted the Google Apps Marketplace, an online store where Google Apps users can browse different cloud-based applications and add the ones they like to their suite of online tools. The apps can share data with the standard Google apps like Gmail and Docs on whatever hosting environment you’re using. The apps currently in the store (Google launched with 50) are skewed towards the business and education customers, which make up the vast majority of hosted Google Apps users right now. When you install an app, it plugs into the user account and application data you already have stored in your current suite of Google Apps. So, you’re basically adding another app to your Google stack. The apps can use Open ID or OAuth for user authentication.