
Google Previews Chrome Web Store — An App Store For The Web - CitizenKane
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/chrome-web-store/
======
stanleydrew
It's now becoming very clear that the year of Linux will never come. It is
obviated by a cross-platform free web browser that gives you access to an open
web "OS." For now, Chrome (or Chromium) is that browser. Google snuck around
the free operating system problem by changing what "operating system" means.

~~~
jshen
I agree, but come to the opposite conclusion. The year of linux will come, but
people want know or care what linux is (except the nerds).

~~~
stuntmouse
I would argue that the age of Unix as an end-user OS is already here. See
iPhone and Android sales figures. Also, WebOS, etc.

~~~
jshen
yeah, linux is too narrow. All of my devices are now Unix. Mac Desktops, Ipad,
Iphone, and I use linux for servers.

I haven't touched a windows box in many years. I've never used vista or
windows 7.

~~~
ewald
Maybe you should give Windows 7 a chance. I use a Mac at home, and I really
like Windows 7 at work.

~~~
jshen
I can't live without a unix shell.

------
iseff
My startup, AppStoreHQ (<http://www.appstorehq.com>), has been private alpha
testing a mobile web app (HTML5) app store for the past couple months. It's
been working out great and having Google come in for standard web apps should
be a big wind in our sail, I think.

Our mobile web app store focuses on distribution and monetization of
developers' work.

Here's an example app (it's an HTML5 frontend to foursquare) called
fortysquires:

<http://www.fortysquires.com>

And it's purchasable from AppStoreHQ: [http://www.appstorehq.com/fortysquires-
mobilewebfoursquarecl...](http://www.appstorehq.com/fortysquires-
mobilewebfoursquareclient-html5web-196344/app)

It's also open source (so you can see how simple the API to interact with us
is): <http://github.com/iseff/fortysquires>

~~~
csmeder
"having Google come in for standard web apps should be a big wind in our sail,
I think."

I'm not sure I understand, Isn't google now a direct competitor. They are now
competing with you, recurly, autorize.net and every other billing company.
Everyone will now use google checkout to pay monthly fees and their Gmail user
name to sign into web apps?

~~~
iseff
A couple quick thoughts pop in to my mind:

1) A rising tide lifts all boats. I suspect this isn't a zero-sum game.

2) Chrome Web Store appears to be more geared towards desktop web apps. We're
solely focused on mobile web apps. This is a key differentiator as the use
case, experience, and expectations are all different. But Google pushing web
apps as a legit form of apps will help us as we push mobile web apps as a
legit form of mobile apps.

~~~
jasonlotito
Valve isn't the only place you can buy games online.

iTunes isn't the only music vendor.

They might be the biggest and most popular, but they aren't alone. =)

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I'm stealing this quote :) well said. Also look at getjar

------
naner
Are apps HTML5 "open-standards" only? Flash use in apps OK? How do payments
work? Does the app store work with Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc?

I've got a million questions!

~~~
aboodman
Hello, my name is Aaron, and I will be your question answerer for today.

\- Anything that works in Chrome can be an app. Flash apps are OK (one of the
demo apps at the keynote, Plants vs Zombies, was a flash app)

\- We haven't finalized exactly how payments will work. We know it has to be
good, because it needs to be better than what you could do yourself.

\- The web apps in the store will most likely work with Mozilla, Opera,
Safari, etc, because those are pretty modern browsers that implement most of
HTML5. But the tight integration with Chrome (the "install" experience) is
Chrome-only, at least for now.

~~~
fjabre
Payments would be tricky I'd think. Take apps like Highrise or Mailchimp for
example. They already have their payment backends working just fine.

Would they be forced to integrate with a Google pay system if they wanted to
get into the store?

~~~
aboodman
I think they would just post their app as "free" in the store and handle
payments themselves. Or support both payment systems if the distribution is
worth it to them.

------
orblivion
It's almost like Google is making it ok to charge for web services again.

------
jasonlbaptiste
This is really great and I've been waiting for GOOG to do this for a while.
The web is the dominant platform for the future. Having companies like Google
making rich HTML5 apps become the standard is a huge boon. Some have already
asked us how this plays into Cloudomatic long term. Like Iseff said, it's a
big wind in our sail. Not just ours or appstorehq's but for web app devs as a
whole.

------
alexro
Soo, it looks like the store is kind of advanced app review directory where
instead of urls you click on shortcuts which smartly translate the url into an
icon + metadata inside the browser, i.e. "install" the app, and if need be
charge you for that.

Seems like a problem will be with having to pay for something which you can
get for free by just going to the web site directly. If on the other hand
developers don't allow direct access to the apps via normal urls, then
obviously the competitors will do.

So, the store will be filled with loads of free apps, promoting paying
versions. That's probably how its best to be used.

------
rooshdi
Our startup, Favetop (<http://favetop.com>) provides similar shortcut
functionality for web apps along with direct site search capabilities. We also
allow users to save all their favorite online media alongside their web apps
with the ability to share these with friends and followers if they choose.

------
blasdel
Awesome! This is the first real confirmation that Google is going to ship
Native Client to end users as a supported technology. They'd intentionally
kept it off the agenda when introducing ChromeOS before, so it wasn't clear to
me that they were going through with it.

I need a VNC/RDP client and an terminal emulator with SSH as NaCL apps. I'd
prefer if they were implemented in Go as wrappers around standard C libraries,
exposing JS APIs to the DOM where at least the UI chrome would be implemented,
and with the settings/data saved in HTML5 LocalStorage.

It's been on my to-do list for a while, but maybe now that Google is promoting
it someone else will fill the hole so I don't have to :)

------
BoppreH
The "video" at <https://chrome.google.com/webstore> is just a picture for me.
Failed HTML5 video attempt? Anyone else had this problem?

Obs: I'm using Chrome.

~~~
PostOnce
You mean the thing that is in fact a picture, and says "Please check back for
the video later" in big letters in the middle of it?

~~~
BoppreH
Haha, that one. I thought it was the title of a slide and didn't even give it
a second thought because the video was not playing. Funny how attention works.

~~~
PostOnce
FYI: it's up now: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaJ6jEPXGE#t=3m28s>

------
rdj
I wonder what long term effects this has on domain names. If people need only
to remember how to use iTunes or Chrome to find and use an app, will you
really need your app.com domain anymore?

~~~
neovive
A brandable domain name would still be beneficial for marketing, demos,
documentation, etc.

------
anigbrowl
Did anyone else notice that in the introductory docs for developers, the last
example shows a Y combinator branded app?
<http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/images/tabstrip-apps.png>

~~~
aboodman
There are lots of finicky details to get right about entrance/exit from apps.
Hacker news is an example of one important class of apps that we hope to make
work well.

------
Calamitous
This is pretty sweet, and a natural progression of Google's entry into both
the handset and browser markets.

Of course, if the Android market is any indicator, nobody's going to be making
a lot of money on this thing any time soon. Still a great idea, though

------
hello_moto
I don't quite understand the concept of this AppStore for the web. What kind
of apps does it sell? a stand-alone Flash based game/app? stand-alone web-app
(with possibly no server behind it, pure JS)?

~~~
83457
URLs

------
tdonia
iPad compatible?

~~~
robotron
Can the iPad run Chrome?

~~~
neurotech1
Safari is based on Webkit, which is also part of Chrome

------
Ionic_Walrus
so its a browser extension implemented in javascript ? how is Chrome Web Store
different from <https://addons.mozilla.org> ?

------
percept
The Singularity Is Near.

~~~
percept
Uh, this was meant in the "Wow, totally cool!" sense and not the "We welcome
our new overlords" sense.

------
gchucky
A fair amount of people have complained that they switched to Chrome from
Firefox because FF is overly bloated, takes a long time to start up, and so
on. Seems to me that a browser that also runs separate apps like this would
take a considerable hit in load times and performance.

~~~
jasonlotito
They are web apps. Basically, web pages. The idea is basically an extension to
Chrome's existing Application shortcuts option in Chrome.

~~~
neovive
This appears to be more of a way to help developers showcase their apps with
the option for payment integration.

~~~
jasonlotito
Yes. But it's not just that. The key is that the user is buying an app that
essentially get's "installed' onto his computer like a traditional
application.

I'll be interested into seeing what happens if a user wants to install an app
while browsing with IE. Will the App store download and install Chrome, and
set Chrome up just to run the app?

