Google Apps Marketplace sales commissions on the horizon
- — 18 September, 2010 06:25
Google in the coming months will begin taking a cut from sales on its Apps Marketplace, where external developers currently pocket all revenue from sales of their applications.
Google, which launched the Apps Marketplace about six months ago, has said all along that it intends to charge developers a 20 per cent commission. However, the billing API (application programming interface) required isn't yet ready.
Developers will have to start paying commissions three months after Google releases the API in the country where they are based, the company said.
In addition to being an e-store, the Marketplace is a technology platform designed to let developers integrate their applications in various ways with the Google Apps suite.
For example, Marketplace applications can be integrated with Google Apps to share a single sign-on and common user interface navigation, as well as to exchange and synchronize data.
In that way, the Marketplace has been conceived as a store that contains complementary, cloud-hosted applications and tools that have been pre-integrated with Google Apps.
The roughly 200 applications currently available in the Marketplace include CRM (customer relationship management), accounting and project management software.
