After a long period of expectation and discussion with third party developers, Google finally launched the Chrome Web Store in December. It is an online portal that enables users to buy and install web applications like MOG and TweetDeck.
The Chrome Web Store is the first platform that uses a unified payment system, Google Checkout to help developers monetize web applications. It will be integrated into Google Chrome’s browser. Unfortunately, currently nobody is using it to purchase anything.
- Google Chrome’s Web Store
Its User Interface resembles that of iTunes. Exactly like iTunes, Top Paid applications is one of the most prominent sections. Toddler Jukebox heads the list, which is a colorful application costing $1.99. It enables you to play twelve kids’ songs. The strange thing is that according to Chrome Web Store, the app has been installed six times this week.
Google appears not to be arranging the list in order of most purchases though the reason is unknown. There are various other applications that are doing better though still below par. MathBoard is the most active app recently, which sells for $2.56 after reducing Google’s fees and has 65 installs weekly. It, thus, earns $165 a week. Its contribution is not negligible but since other applications on the Store are making almost nothing, the result is not good.
There is a possibility of the drop in the sales due to the holidays, but still it couldn’t have a very huge impact. Google has not even taken many steps to expose the store to users. At present the stable release of Chrome does not feature the Chrome Web Store anywhere but shows up only when you go to the store directly and install an app. This is probably a cause of the low sales. Google, however, has placed a few banner ads on some sites and says that the Web Store got a lot of publicity during the launch so it is not a secret store.
A few free applications like Quick Note are attracting the users. It has had 8,000 installs this week. Free applications will definitely get installed more than the paid ones but the ratio of 65 to 8,000 is quite steep.
The point is Google still has to work a lot on the Chrome Web Store. It is still not possible to differentiate the full-fledged applications from the ones that are just bookmarks. It takes only a couple of clicks to buy an application if you have a Google Checkout account. That is, the purchase is very simple but Google needs to create awareness amongst the users about what they are paying for.