Chrome Store Developer Preview Launches

This week at the Google Developer Conference in Europe, Chrome developer advocate Michael Mahemoff and Mark DeLoura, the company's new game developer advocate, announced that the Chrome Web Store would open its doors in October.  The Chrome Web Store was announced and demoed at this year's Google I/O conference, and it is aimed at building the largest centralized marketplace for web apps on the desktop.  

Today, Google released a developer preview of the Chrome Web Store.  Developers can start to upload their apps and test the system in preparation for the store's October debut.  Here's a video to show how easy it is to get started:



Although web applications are available on any browser, only Chrome will have its own special hub for "installing" apps and creating shortcuts for easy access to the apps you commonly use.  It is meant to solve a lot of the problems surrounding web app discovery and monetization.  The Chrome Web Store will support customer reviews, and it will feature an easy, streamlined publishing process - in fact, there's no cumbersome (i.e. 'Apple-like') approval process for posting content.  Apps will be auto-approved and published "most of the time."

In contrast to mobile marketplaces, which take around 30% of your revenue, Google won't take any share of your app revenues in the Chrome Web Store.  There will only be a 5% processing fee for paid apps - this is a major change from the Google I/O announcement, which said there would be a 70/30 revenue split.    

The site is almost finished with its secure payment system and it will feature advanced HTML5 permissions for apps that support this functionality. 

Here's what the store will support by the launch date:

• Free and paid apps
• Free trials
• Subscriptions
• Purchase apps from anywhere in the world
• Only accepts US dollars
• Use of other in-app payment platforms permitted

• Multiple currencies
• in-app transactions (micro-payments)