Google Chrome Web Store Up and Running

Google unveiled its browser-based Web Store (App Store) earlier this week, taking a leaf out of Apple’s book and applying the App Store methodology to their own Chrome browser environment. As of today, there are nearly 1000 Apps and extensions available, the most popular of which are social utilities TweetDeck and HootSuite, alongside the usual avalanche of games, news and information services.

I was very happy to see one of my favourite games - ’Plants vs Zombies’ available, although marginally surprised that there is no Angry Birds? I have also downloaded Tube Service Updates, WeatherBug Weather Window - which is a little buggy, a couple of Amazon apps, Flixster, Google News, Google Books, Aviary Image Editor, Slide Rocket and some odds and sods - I have around 20 Apps currently - all Free.

For the paid Apps, the most popular are at the $1.99 rate, some are at $2.99 and a few are at $4.99 - I have yet to see anything higher, but for sure there are more expensive Apps available. For me the acid test of price points is the iPhone friendly $0.99 / £0.59 price point, which is the one I buy most of my iPhone games at; although in no way exclusively. I do wonder whether some of those paid-for Apps are worth their $4.99 or more premium. For me, the perfect online  / mobile pricing model is the Rovio - Angry Birds $0.99 / £0.59 price point.

A number of the applications I have downloaded are a little buggy, and some are a little clunky in use. They use a variety of HTML 5, Flash and JavaScript. This is very much a fledgling project, and much will improve quite quickly for sure. I’m not yet in a position to do a top 10 Apps list, or properly constructively review the Web Store’s output. What I can say is that the Google Chome Web Store experience itself is quite excellent - looking up / browsing for, selecting and installing Apps that is to say. There is still plenty of room for improvement, and the aesthetics can easily be improved, but as a starting point it’s pretty great actually.

I now need to update all my Twitter settings so that I can make use of the supposedly quite brilliant TweetDeck App - more feedback in a week or two!