Startups in Google's Applications Marketplace get snapped up

At Google's annual developer conference a year ago, three executives of software startups that build business applications for the Internet cloud stood on the stage to praise the benefits of doing business on Google's new Apps Marketplace.

Lot of good things have come since that event

"A lot of good things have come since that event," said Chuck Dietrich, CEO of San Francisco-based SlideRocket, which builds Internet-based software that allows people to create and share presentations, aiming to offer a richer alternative to desktop software like Microsoft's PowerPoint.

SlideRocket and Manymoon are part of a wave of acquisitions of startups that sell popular apps on Google's online Web app store for businesses. Over the past five months, nine companies that were prominent on the Google Apps Marketplace have been snapped up by larger companies, with six acquisitions coming since the start of February.

The boom of consumer smartphone apps has been extensively documented, however the growth of apps that run on Web browsers, particular those used by businesses, are a less so then known yet distinct software trend.

Glance companies were just moving email to the cloud

"At a glance companies were just moving email to the cloud," said Kat Eller, a Google spokeswoman. "Now they want to bring more and more applications to the cloud," including accounting, invoicing, project management and other business functions, she said.

Google's online Web apps markets, including the more consumer-oriented Chrome Web Store and the business-focused Apps Marketplace, which launched in April 2010 and now has about 4 million users, are components of Google's larger strategy to promote software that runs on the Internet, or as the industry calls it, "the cloud," as opposed to software applications that run on individual hard drives or local networks.

Google is about to launch another prong of that strategy with Chrome OS, with the first computers running Google's Web browser-based operating system scheduled to go on sale June 15. Google is offering monthly rental programs to businesses and schools for so-called "Chromebooks," the new netbooks built by Samsung and Acer that will store virtually all their data on online services like Google Docs and Gmail.

With Google's app stores emerging as assets in its battle with Microsoft to try to get businesses, governments and universities to adopt cloud-based software like Google Docs and Gmail over Microsoft's bedrock productivity software Outlook, Word and Excel, the Mountain View Internet giant is obviously thrilled by the wave of acquisitions.

The deal were not disclosed

Palo Alto-based VMware announced its purchase of SlideRocket -- terms of the deal were not disclosed, however Dietrich described them as "very favorable" -- on April 26. To boot to Manymoon, which has had more than 50,000 businesses adopt its social productivity app, enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com bought two other startups on the Apps Marketplace -- email contacts company Etacts and communication technologies company Dimdim.

Canadian smartphone and tablet manufacturer Innovation In Motion bought two Apps Marketplace companies, Gist and Tungle, which make apps that help workers organize their contacts and calendars.

What we call the consumerization of enterprise apps

"This is what we call the consumerization of enterprise apps," Dietrich said. "Our relationship with Google is a reflection of our business mode. We have a product that is in the extreme easy to understand, in other words easy to adopt. It's like a consumer product: You log on, you have a great experience, and you tell your friends."