Important Changes to Google Apps Marketplace Billing Policies

When we launched the Google Apps Marketplace in March last year, one of our goals was to make it easy for developers to build, integrate, and sell their apps to Google Apps users. Since then, each vendor in the Google Apps Marketplace has handled their own billing and keeps the revenue they generate. Today, we are making that the official Marketplace policy moving forward: Google will not require vendors to adopt a Google billing API or share any portion of their revenue with us. This will keep more revenue in developers’ pockets, and brings the Google Apps Marketplace policy in line with the Chrome Web Store.

So it’s business as usual -- developers can continue to “bring their own billing” to the Marketplace. Developers retain full control over application pricing and billing, and continue to keep all revenue from Google Apps Marketplace customers.
If you’re in need of a billing solution, we encourage you to try Google Checkout and In-App Payments. Or use one of the many other commercial billing and subscription services available online.

Please join us at our next Google Apps Developer Office Hours on Google+ Hangouts on December 19th at 12 PM PST time to discuss the Google Apps Marketplace and any questions you may have about these changes.

Google Apps Developer Hackathon on Tuesday in Mountain View

If you're near Mountain View, California, please join us for a Google Apps Developer Hackathon on Tuesday from 1pm-8pm. The event will bring together developers from the Marketplace ISV, SI and Google Apps customer communities along with Google engineers for a day of hacking.

You are welcome to attend if you're interested in building a new application using Google Apps APIs or would like to connect users with their data by integrating Google Apps with an existing app. We will be handing out prizes for the best projects, so you should be prepared to write code! (rules to be sent to registrants before the event)

We still have a few spots left, so register now or see our earlier post on the Google Apps Developer Blog for more info. See you Tuesday!