Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for web applications for Google Chrome or Google Apps. It was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 19, 2010 by Vic Gundotra and released on December 6, 2010. The software allows users to install and run web applications for the Google Chrome browser. The Chrome Web Store user experience and design was created by Fi.

Applications, browser themes and extensions in the store are written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Google Apps Script and, from Chrome 14, can use Google Native Client.

The store hosts free and paid applications. Examples of applications available in the store include the games Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds. The Store has been described as being like Google Play, but for "apps on the web". A visual and UI overhaul of the store was announced on October 25, 2011.

Criticism
Some commentators have questioned the need for an online app store. Ryan Paul of Ars Technica said on December 9, 2010: "The way that users consume applications in the desktop and mobile world is fundamentally different than the way that they do it on the Web—where paywalls are often reviled and there is little distinction between content and software. In such an environment, does the application store model make any sense? We are not convinced...Aside from gaming, the idea of an application store in a Web browser—where installation is little more than bookmarking—seems counterintuitive and leaves us with the impression that the entire exercise is a solution in search of a problem."

In January 2014, media outlets exposed a recent trend of developers selling the rights to their Chrome extensions to unknown third-party companies (for as much as "four-figure" amounts), who then silently push updates that incorporate previously non-existent adware into the extensions. The two extensions singled out by these reports, Tweet This Page and Add to Feedly, were pulled from Chrome Web Store by Google on January 19, 2014.

Sales
TechCrunch reported that sales of paid web apps had by January 2011 sunk, with the best-selling app earning just $165 a week.

In December 2011, TechCrunch reported that the redesign of the Web Store had been a "boon for developers", with the remake seeming to "catalyze a big increase in traffic, across downloads, users, and total number of apps". As of June 2012, users had installed 750 million apps from the Chrome Web Store.