Success with the Chrome Web Store

By Alexandra Levich, Product Manager

Cross-posted from the Chromium Blog

We recently expanded the reach of the Chrome Web Store from the U.S. to 24 more countries. Developers from around the world have already launched successful apps in the Chrome Web Store to US users. Now all developers can reach a global user base.

What makes this global reach even more interesting is the global payments infrastructure that goes along with it. The store allows developers from 20 countries to sell apps in the store, and users to buy apps in their local currency. We also recently launched the In-App Payments API, which allows developers (U.S.-only for now; international soon) to sell virtual goods in their apps. Integration is easy and transaction fees are only 5%. Graphicly, an early user of in-app payments, saw its net revenues double after starting to use the API and experienced an even bigger rise in profit margins due to increased conversions and lower transaction fees.

In keeping with our international theme, we’d like to highlight a few developers from different parts of the world who have utilized Chrome’s global reach to find success in the store:

  • Audiotool is an online music production app that was built by a team of German developers. They saw the Chrome Web Store as a way to present their app to an international audience. Audiotool’s traffic increased by 20% after launching in the store, and this motivated the team to release another app in the store.
  • Psykopaint is the brainchild of French developer Mathieu Gosselin. The Chrome Web Store provided Mathieu an opportunity to get his photo painting app noticed outside of France. Traffic to Psykopaint has jumped by 700% since it launched in the store and Mathieu has found that Chrome Web Store users tend to be more engaged than other users.
  • Finally, Nulab, a Japanese company, launched its online diagramming app, Cacoo, in the store to expand its user base outside Japan. In just a few months after Cacoo was released in multiple languages in the Chrome Web Store, the app already accounts for 20% of Cacoo’s user base.

The experience of Audiotool, Psykopaint and Nulab shows that no matter where you’re located, you can always find a global audience for your applications in the Chrome Web Store. To learn more about the stories of these and other successful Chrome Web Store developers, read our case studies. And if you want to find out more about posting your app in the store, visit our documentation at code.google.com/chrome/webstore.

Alex Levich is a product manager working on Chrome Web Store.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

The Google Summer of Code Doc Summit and OSM

For 5 days in October the Google Summer of Code Doc Summit, organized together with FLOSS Manuals, will bring together four documentation teams from open source projects, guest speakers, and free documentation ‘free agents’ to discuss everything and anything concerning the free documentation of free software. The event will feature a two day unconference and a three day Book Sprint. During the Book Sprint each project will produce a Book ready for distribution in print and electronic book formats.
The event is an ambitious project. Not only are unconferences about free software documentation scarce, never before has a Book Sprint been attempted with four projects working simultaneously on their own book. It’s going to be an extremely interesting and challenging event.
Free software documentation has often been a very low priority for free software projects. Often the documentation suffers from common flaws including:
  • no documentation existing at all
  • assumptions about the user’s knowledge are set too high
  • poor navigation
  • unexplained jargon
  • there is no visual component
  • the documentation is proprietary or ‘closed’
  • the format is unreadable
  • no translation workflow
  • operational steps are missing, unexplained, written ‘from memory’ or state how the software ‘should’ operate
  • the documentation is out of date, not easily re-usable or not easily modifiable.
The Google Summer of Code Doc Summit will attempt to discuss and address these problematic issues and look towards positive models for documentation production. We hope to shine light on the importance of the free software documentation ‘sector’ in the ecology of Free software. Free (libre) documentation is not simply an aid for learning how to use free software, it is a road into education and adoption in industry, a tool for demonstrating to clients how free software will meet their needs and expectations, and an important promotional tool for the advancement of free software. A healthy free documentation sector is both socially and economically empowering. We believe Free Documentation of Free Software efforts and ideals should be valued on the same level as free software itself and that is exactly what we plan to do at this Summit.
The Google Summer of Code Doc Summit is more than a think tank and an opportunity to discuss real world issues. Four projects, OpenMRS, KDE, Sahana, and OpenStreetMap, will have a chance to directly strengthen their documentation efforts. We look forward to working together with each of the selected teams and individuals to help them produce their own book by the end of the five day summit.
It’s going to be a great event.

Street View with the Google Street View Image API

The Google Maps API family includes the Google Static Maps API, which delivers maps as fixed images in PNG, GIF, or JPG format. It’s great when you want to quickly add a map to a page without writing a JavaScript application, when you need maps on a device with no JavaScript support, or for generating lightweight thumbnail maps or maps for printing. In fact we’re so delighted with the popularity of the Static Maps API that today we’re launching an accompanying service for Street View imagery.

The Google Street View Image API brings the simplicity of the Static Maps API to Street View, providing a way to add a Street View image or thumbnail to any application without the need for JavaScript. Simply construct a URL in accordance with the documentation, and the API returns the corresponding Street View panorama as an image in JPG format:

You can use the Street View Image API in both web based and mobile apps, and the size limits and daily quotas match those of the Static Maps API for both the consumer Maps API and Maps API Premier. You can display Street View images in your apps using this API without a corresponding Google map, but if you do choose to display a map it must be provided by Google. For more details on how to use the Street View Image API please refer to the documentation.

To make it easier to find help using the Street View Image API and Static Maps API, we’re also launching a new forum today dedicated to these services. If you have any questions regarding use of these APIs going forward we recommend you head over to the new Google Maps Image APIs group. We look forward to seeing you there!