The Google Apps store

To my mind, the greatest change in the way the software and web world actually works has been the development of apps/gadgets/plugins etc, call them what you will.

The concept is simple – a developer creating a service, be it a web site, a mobile phone or whatever, will only create a certain number of features, and may then work to create new features one at a time.  Traditionally if you wanted to add lots of features you needed lots of people working for you to do it.   

In recent years, various facilities have been added to enable anybody (with the necessary skills) to create additional features for an existing service.   Probably the most famous and successful of these is the Apple App Store.  The iPhone is a pretty decent piece of kit on it’s own, but it would never have developed the success it has were it not for the many thousands of apps available on the App Store, which have been developed by individuals and businesses around the world.  It’s a win win situation – the user gets more choice, the app designer gets the opportunity to create work on an additional platform and potentially earn money, and the original developer has an enhance market for the product. 

One of the latest developments along these lines is the Google Apps Marketplace.  I think Google Apps is an awesome service, both for companies, but also for individuals.  I’ve used it for a couple of years now, and my use had developed over time, such that I now use it for email on my domain, my calendar, my contacts, online document storage, task manager amongst other things.  With most of these functions synced with my iPhone, it becomes an even more powerful product.  Therefore, I was quite excited to see the addition of a marketplace where the user can access a mass of additional features.

Many of the apps now available are previously existing additional services, but with integration into Google Apps.  For example, one service I’ve been trying out is Aviary, which is an online image editor, amongst other things.  With this linked into Google Apps, the documents I work on using Aviary are automatically saved into my Google Docs saved documents.  Various other services can now do the same, which is helpful for keeping things in one place – one of the difficulties in this day of cloud computing is it’s easy to end up with work saved all over the place, which can lead things getting hard to find!

If you are using Google Apps either personally or within your business, this is definitely something worth checking out.