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Google Opens Apps Marketplace
snydeq writes "Google has launched the Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications. The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites, and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap, and Zoho. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard, and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth."
I don't see it here or the TFA so http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
I see Google trying to leverage this for Android App sales.
It will be "voluntary". For a while...
Nice summary, no link to the site.
So here it is:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home
"The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google's universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain's data."
Hype, clouds, lock-in and the anti-thesis of free-as-in-freedom software, all in one convenient bubble.
While I see the benefits of this, I can't help but see that all these things can be easily manipulated into Google "owning" the services using this. If this was Microsoft I think that everyone would be raising red flags, but Google hasn't abused the community's trust... yet. And no, I'm not really anti-Google, I use Gmail for my primary e-mail and will be getting an Android phone as soon as a decent one comes to AT&T or I get an unlocked one.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe if this was based on an open standard defining how to implement the same services on a non-Google platform, this would all be more palatable.
don't be evil.. yet.
You're absolutely right. I really hope all of this bullshit ends soon, so we can get back to writing real applications that let people actually get stuff of value done.
Eventually, even the stupidest of managers will have to realize that the marketing idiots pushing for cloud computing and "app stores" are full of shit, and fire their sorry asses.
I never would have thought it, but it makes me yearn for the days when we wrote Java apps deployed to our own Solaris servers, and didn't have to deal with all of the stupidity involved with developing and deploying even a simple cloud app.
Jesus guys, going for blood pretty early here - it's just a hosted/cloud app store where you can list stuff, and if you want to integrate your app into Google Apps, you can, but you don't have to.
I'm really happy to see it as I don't know of many good centralized hosted app stores.
I just listed my little niche hosted small business application and paid the $100 fee gladly. Keep in mind that you can list third party hosted applications such as hosted CRM or whatever that you might specialize in, and you absolutely do not have to use the integration with Google Apps. While that's potentially a major benefit, it would take some development work to integrate that. The vendor listing process was very simple and flexible allowing me to supply all kinds of information about my hosted service that I fully control. If I get even one customer from this, it will have paid for itself 10 times over. And because it is not integrated with Google Apps tabs or whatever, I still fully control everything. It's just a yellow pages for hosted apps, so calm down already.
I do hope to work with the app developer to convince them to add this Google App integration later on but only if I can somehow determine that people aren't buying due to the lack of that feature. Based on the quality of the listing though, and the typical skill level of the target audience, I don't see this as a major issue at the moment. Just a "that would be cool" thing.
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Internet Business Feed @ Feed Distiller
I think this harms open software more than Microsoft ever has.
Come to think of it - Microsoft with its money-grabbing ways did more in the way of pushing the open source movement than we would think. They provided the (although unintentionally) 87% of the incentive to go opensource.
I don't have too much trouble trusting Google. They haven't done anything yet that would make me lose that trust. They have a lot riding on maintaining that trust with their users. I have more of a problem trusting the smaller companies (app developers) with my data. They don't depend on my trust as much.
And, as we role along, Microsoft has actually booted, I think, ISVs from its own Windows store, so now, there's just Microsoft selling a Microsoft stuff, and, a bunch of shareware sites with varying degrees of reputation. I think, in the long run, not having a good store is really damaging the market for Windows software. While Google and Apple get it, Microsoft seems not to.
This is my sig.
It's not just "instant gratification." CFOs like expenses they can get their heads around. They pay a monthly bill for the lights, for the phones, for their lease. Traditional software, on the other hand, can be pretty hard to budget effectively. How many heads do you need to count for licenses? When will the new version be released, and how long should you wait to upgrade? Sun Microsystems switched to a per-employee, per-month licensing scheme for its software (based on the total size of your organization, not the number of machines that would have the software installed) and it claimed its customers were much happier with the new way of reckoning cost.
The other part of it, of course, is what you allude to. The sticker price of any on-premise software is just a small fraction of its total cost of ownership. You need the hardware to deploy it on, plus hardware to QA patches. But the real cost is in the ongoing maintenance required to keep it running, secure and up to date. With cloud services you roll those costs into the monthly fee. No more haggling the price of health insurance, vacation time, redundant employees for maintenance roles and the managers to supervise them. The quoted price is what you pay. That's appealing to a lot of business managers.
Breakfast served all day!
has anyone told this limey bloak to go fark himself yet?
Free /. advice on a project that could potentially benefit him financially?!?
Go get a consultant. Hire someone.
...but I'd rather keep my data and the applications I need to manipulate it on my own machine, under my own control. Even in the absence of sheer blackmail, what happens to your work when some patent/copyright troll finds a way to sue the supplier, and demands that the program you've been using be made unavailable until the case is decided?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Really crafty....