Have you read about the upcoming Chrome Extension Store ?
Yet another pending failure from Google ?
As browser extensions are slowly gaining ground and popularity, I urge you to take a moment to look at the extensions you already have installed to see if there were any worth spending money on.
Now consider…
I know people with beautiful houses, that spent $10,000 on new kitchens.
I know people with nice car, that spent $1,000 on sound systems.
I know people with hi-end game PCs, that spent $100 on extra memory
I know people with shiny iPhones, that spent $10 on cool apps
I know people with a cheese-burger, that spent $1 to add onions and fries.
Everything is relative
When it is time to improve and upgrade, people usually use the original gadget cost to determine if the additional cost is reasonable.
Most probably wouldn’t even considering buying a $100 app for their $400 iPhone.
And yet find it easy to spend the same $100 to improve their $10,000 car.
Now tell me
How much would you pay to improve your FREE browser ?
That’s a good question. What would you pay for Angry Birds on you laptop?
I think Google will try to position the browser (and later, ChromeOS) as a substitute model for delivering any kind of software. This may actually work. Think of it this way, if you buy a $150 ChromeOS netbook, would you buy an app from the chrome store for $2? The browser is free, true, but Google are trying to build an ecosystem.
I think they’ll have to be very patient before they can tell for sure if this is a good idea or not. Also, I think it’s a good thing they try new stuff and are not afraid to fail.
As far as I understood, Google are developing web-apps store, not chrome-extensions store.
I guess the idea here is to simplify the process of discovery (and maybe payment?) of web-apps.
And interestingly, Mozilla are doing something similar:
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/10/19/prototype-of-an-open-web-app-ecosystem/