Google Preps to Launch App Store for Google Apps

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Mar 8, 2010

Is Google getting ready to launch a store for Apps this week? Rumor says so.

There’s An App for That

News has been circulating on sites like The Wall Street Journal, Mashable and VentureBeat about Google’s plans to sell third-party software. The tools would be designed to enhance Google’s apps suite, including Gmail, Docs, Sites, Calendar, GTalk, etc.

Now, Google already has a solutions marketplace (addon software and support) for Google Apps users, as well as an Android Marketplace which houses apps for Android-based mobile devices. A new store for business would not only be a happy addition to the family, it would make a ton of sense.

Just consider Apple’s huge success (word is their AppStore generated 3 billion downloads in only a couple years).

A business app store would also work to better integrate big G’s partners, as well as make it easier for today’s 20 million Google Apps users to check out and purchase new services.

Google Apps Happenings

In general, Google Apps has been quite busy. Some of the biggest news as of late is Google's free recovery and backup feature, which utilizes a technology called synchronous replication. It works by replicating every action taken in Google Apps into a second data center. The goal is to not only dry up Google users' worries over the possible loss of information during an unpredictable outage, but also to transfer data so quickly that users won’t even notice when a data center experiences an interruption.

Supposedly the app store announcement is going to be made sometime this month, perhaps even this week. Keep an eye out for that here.