A dagger held to the heart of Microsoft. Yeah, Google, get the devs on your side by helping them make a buck:

Google opens Google Apps Marketplace
Google launched on Tuesday evening Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications.

The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap and Zoho.

"Tonight, what we're doing is we're announcing a business-to-business marketplace for Google Apps users, where the idea is that we want to help users get more applications for Google Apps from third-party developers," said Chris Vander Mey, Google senior product manager, in an interview on Tuesday afternoon. Among the applications is a small business payroll system from Intuit, called Intuit Online Payroll, and Box.net's self-named content management system.

Users can link to an application via the UI in Google applications, offering benefits like single sign-on and sharing of data between Google Apps and third-party applications. Centralized administration also is featured.

"As you purchase applications, they're automatically integrated into your domain," Vander Mey said. Applications can be installed within a domain via a four-click process. Google Apps Marketplace could be compared to the Apple App Store for iPhone applications or the Salesforce.com Force.com cloud application platform, said Vander Mey.

At Box.net, an official cited integration benefits of Google Apps marketplace.

"Basically, we're now pretty deeply integrated with Google Apps," said Jennifer Grant, vice president of marketing at Box.net. Users can access Box.net directly from applications such as Gmail, she said...

Source: InfoWorld

...outstanding. Death to Microsoft Office, which is nothing other than an extortionate scam perpetrated against the planet Earth...