If the browser is the new operating system, where will we buy software for it to run, and content for it to display? Google thinks it has found the answer, with its Chrome Web Store, announced at its own Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Just like you can buy apps for your iPhone, Android, or other smartphone, you'll soon be able to purchase web apps for your browser. This not only gives app developers a new avenue for selling their software, but will allow content industries such as news publications, video producers and musicians to sell web content, having notoriously struggled to make their content pay online in the absence of such a store.
For instance, a record label will be able to sell an album that displays extra content within a web browser as music plays, and publishers creating paid mobile apps will be able to apply the same approach to the web, perhaps charging $5 a month for premium access to their publications.
And, should they choose, they'll be able to offer these web apps for free. Confusion is quickly spreading about whether these apps will only run in Google's Chrome browser – despite the fact that Google clearly states near the top of the website for the Chrome Web Store that any modern browser will be able to run the apps. "Because web apps listed in the Chrome Web Store are regular web applications, built with standard web tools, they can be used by anyone using a modern browser that supports these web technologies," reads the first entry in Google's FAQ about the store.
"Web apps listed in the Chrome Web Store are regular web applications that are built with standard web tools and technologies," reiterates the second entry. "The same web applications will run in other modern browsers that support these technologies."
Still, that didn't stop the Wall Street Journal, which runs its own, single-product web store consisting of its own full-length articles, from sowing considerable doubt about whether the apps would run in any browser, which we don't feel the need to repeat here for fear of perpetuating that confusion.
The two areas in which Google's Chrome browser might potentially have an advantage over other browsers are shortcuts (not a big deal) and that "installed web apps can also request advanced HTML5 permissions" – a feature that other browsers should be able to duplicate, should their developers decide to add it, because HTML5 is an open standard.
"The web is the most important platform of our generation," said Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra at Wednesday's keynote. "Because it's a platform controlled by none of us, it's the only platform truly controlled by all of us."
The Google Web Store is slated to launch later this year. For now, the idea is still in the early stages, and only developers with a special version of the Chrome browser for Windows can install these web apps. Eventually, these apps will run in any browser with support for HTML5 and other modern, open technologies, offering a lifeline to content industries that have otherwise struggled to make web content pay.
The big losers in all of this: Microsoft and Apple, whose desktop operating systems just got a lot less interesting. And that's not all – the iTunes app store, which only sells software that runs on Apple products, now looks even more like a closed-off, walled garden.
See Also:
- Google's Chrome OS Netbook Video Shows Lala as Embedded Music Service
- Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web
- Acer's Google Chrome OS Devices Likely in June
- Google Fires at Apple, Integrates Flash Into Chrome Browser
- Chrome 2.0 beta Delivers Impressive Speed Bump
- Google Chrome, Mobile Browsers Survive Security Challenge
- Google Announces PC Operating System to Compete with Windows
