Google Apps becomes a platform, gets its own app store

Google has launched Google Apps Marketplace and is demonstrating how external Web applications from other vendors can be integrated into Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other services that are part of the search giant's Web-based productivity suite.

In the quest for data liberation, Google's hosted Web services have long offered a wide range of APIs for third-party developers. With the launch of the new marketplace, however, Google Apps for domains is opening up even further and enabling external software to expose its own functionality directly through Google's Web-based applications. This will make it possible for third-party software in the cloud to offer broad interoperability with Google Apps and very tight integration. When a Google Apps domain administrator installs an application from the new marketplace, it will be accessible to users directly through the Google Apps navigation bar, and the administrator will be able to configure it through the Google Apps control panel. Those are the simplest examples of how software can tie into the Google Apps interface. Google says that there are many other integration points that can be used by app developers.