One-Fifth of the Take Ain’t a Bad Deal

To date, Google Apps has more than 2 million businesses and 25 million users

Mar. 18, 2010 04:45 AM

Wow! I’m impressed with the deal Google cut for sales of apps on its cloud-based Google Marketplace, which it launched on March 9th. The cut is 20% of sales of apps, which are integrated with and extend Google Apps. Apparently, Google will charge developers a $100 admission fee to enter its market and then take the 20% cut of application sales, recurring on subscriptions. (This includes the purchase and install process, as well as any integration features that go along with installable apps.)

To date, Google Apps has more than 2 million businesses and 25 million users.

So here we have a company that’s already a cloud giant, with its GoogleApps (Gmail, Docs, etc.), which is now paving the way for its future fortune as a host for third-party cloud app developers. If I didn’t have all my money tied up in the corner grocery store, I’d buy a few shares of Google stock.

Beyond the awesome deal Google made, however. The store marks another milestone in cloud development, I say.

The Google Apps Marketplace will enable Google Apps users to access business apps for project management, billing and accounting, travel management, and other services, according to an account I read. That’s going to mean a blessing for a lot of small companies and entrepreneurs who can’t afford to buy big, cumbersome and expensive (not to mention update-needy) business software. (Google Apps Marketplace handles any software updates made to third-party apps.)

This also means Google is getting more aggressive in driving growth for its own suite of solutions, and if you haven’t already figured it out, the move also makes Google more competitive with existing cloud application stores such as Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

Congrats to Google! And my prediction is to make way for an onslaught of developers marketing their monitoring services on the new marketplace, as more and more companies wake up to the reality that the cloud is promising – but it ain’t perfect in terms of being 100% reliable and secure.

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Published Mar. 18, 2010— Reads 2,910
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About Hovhannes Avoyan
Hovhannes Avoyan is the CEO of Monitis, Inc., a provider of on-demand systems management and monitoring software to 50,000 users spanning small businesses and Fortune 500 companies.

Prior to Monitis, he served as General Manager and Director of Development at prominent web portal Lycos Europe, where he grew the Lycos Armenia group from 30 people to over 200, making it the company's largest development center. Prior to Lycos, Avoyan was VP of Technology at Brience, Inc. (based in San Francisco and acquired by Syniverse), which delivered mobile internet content solutions to companies like Cisco, Ingram Micro, Washington Mutual, Wyndham Hotels , T-Mobile , and CNN. Prior to that, he served as the founder and CEO of CEDIT ltd., which was acquired by Brience. A 24 year veteran of the software industry, he also runs Sourcio cjsc, an IT consulting company and startup incubator specializing in web 2.0 products and open-source technologies.

Hovhannes is a senior lecturer at the American Univeristy of Armenia and has been a visiting lecturer at San Francisco State University. He is a graduate of Bertelsmann University.

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