

Chrome Web Store - panarky
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/

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mixmax
This is part of an interesting trend that's potentially going to be very
lucrative for developers.

Apple store, Chrome web store, Android market, etc. are all solving the
marketing and distribution problem for developers all over the world.
Furthermore with rankings and reviews the good apps will rise to the top while
the bad ones will be lost in obscurity. It's increasingly a game of creating
compelling products and not compelling marketing to win.

We're not quite there yet, there's still lots of work to be done with
rankings, etc. but the trend is quite clear. I wonder when Mozilla will
announce their app store.

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njharman
Stores do very litte for marketing (the popular apps are popular due to being
good and having been excellently marketed both in and out of stores, put an
app on store with no marketing and see how well it does).

Mobile appstore made sense since there wasn't an existing distribution or
discovery infrastructure. For web apps the Internet has already solved
distribution and discovery..

I see appstores as a plague and counter to the open and free Internet. A few
companies are getting (for practical purposes) "monopolies". Altering the
level playing field into one in which developers are beholden to appstores.

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protomyth
I'd have to mention an exception to the "stores do very litte for marketing".
The parts of the Apple App Store that are edited / curated by employees do
have a significant affect on sales and can be seen as app store marketing.
Also, the commercials from Apple that show apps boost sales also.

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isani
I think Google's doing themselves a disservice by trying to make the Chrome
Web Store sound too much like the App Store. It sets up the wrong expectation.

There's already a user backlash visible in reviews. A lot of people are
disappointed that a Gmail app is just a link to the Gmail website, for
example.

Here's a quick vocabulary of Google's terms and what they actually mean:

app – website

store – directory

install an app – add a bookmark

paid app – paywall managed by Google

in-app purchase – paywall managed by third party

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bemmu
That's also my initial mindset as a developer, but I wonder how casual users
will perceive this? Every time you open a new tab, the apps are there. It
almost feels like an inventory in a game, like you "have" the app in some
sense.

If nothing else, for a developer it must be hugely beneficial to get your
website link to the new tab page.

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tree_of_item
I see that there is an HTML5 game for sale.

How viable is that? Wouldn't it be trivial to "steal" since you can just view
the source code? Would obfuscation help at all?

I'd love to be able to sell HTML5 games, but it doesn't strike me as a
realistic option.

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drusenko
This <http://code.google.com/chrome/webstore/docs/index.html#drm> and this
[http://code.google.com/chrome/webstore/docs/check_for_paymen...](http://code.google.com/chrome/webstore/docs/check_for_payment.html)
might be useful here...

~~~
archgoon
Only to an extent. Once someone has access to the source, anyone could pirate
or reverse engineer it, which seems to be the GP's concern.

However, this isn't necessarily any different than binary executables, which
we know experience a fair amount of pirating.

Also from that FAQ:

"Update your app frequently, so that only authorized users will always have
the latest, greatest version of the app. Distributing updates is easy, thanks
to Chrome's support for autoupdate. You just increment the version number in
the manifest, update the ZIP file, and then use the Chrome Developer Dashboard
to upload and publish the updated ZIP file. Over the next few hours, the new
version of the app starts going out to its existing users."

"Don't put any roadblocks in front of users. Your app should be easy to buy,
and it should work everywhere users want it to work."

That is: "Don't rely on DRM to protect you. It won't work, and you'll piss
your users off."

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izendejas
Can someone please develop an awesome web-based IDE, so that we, developers,
are not left out of the Chrome OS goodness? You can include seamless
integration with github, or dropbox, for "cloud" storage. And of course, I'm
assuming HTML5 will allow you to work offline.

Has anyone used Bespin and/or any existing web-based IDEs? Googling didn't
return anything compelling.

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primigenus
Our HTML prototyping tool Quplo (<http://quplo.com>) is a web-based IDE for
designers and developers. It doesn't have github, dropbox, or server-side
coding (offline support is on the way). It's purely meant for developing
prototypes. But it's a start. We'd love to see more products in this arena and
we'll definitely be making sure we're in the Web Store ASAP.

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extension
Anybody figured out how to setup a paid app? I already have an extension in
the gallery but I don't see anywhere to set a price for it.

Also, it appears that only US and UK developers can be a Google Checkout
merchant, _except_ for the Android Market where anyone from one of a bazillion
different countries can sell.

However, the Chrome Web Store developer ToS seems to imply that other payment
processors can be used, provided they are approved by Google. It doesn't say
who those payment processors are or how they integrate with the store.

So yeah, anybody figured out how it all works?

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pdelgallego
It is possible to monetize the chrome applications using ads? I am looking in
the terms of use, but I dont find anything against it.

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immad
Yes it is. Its like the web, once the user goes to your App you can show them
whatever you want.

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starnix17
I wonder if this means the Android Market's official web front-end is almost
ready to go.

They previewed it at Google IO and it still hasn't surfaced :-(.

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JSig
Get ready to play some PopIt. Actually, I've never heard of this game before.
But now that it's shipping with chrome I can play it all the time at work.

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venturebros
Are these web apps hosted on a google server or on the publishers?

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njharman
These apps seem to be nothing more than links to websites.

Am I missing something?

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mitjak
Indeed. I expected some sort of trimmed down simpler versions that would load
more easily on a Chrome OS netbook. So far I've tried MapQuest and Evernote,
and both just showed up as the regular bloated websites that they are upon
'installation'.

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proles
it will be interesting to see if this is a way for google to provide a
marketplace within ios devices (specially) via a potential release of chrome
for iphone/ipad/ipod, effectively allowing android developers an in to both
consumer groups.

