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This week, Google announced the availability of the Google Apps Marketplace, a store for installable applications that integrate directly with the Google Apps suite that has already become hugely popular.

The apps at launch include plenty of familiar names: Intuit for payroll processing, Concur for expense tracking, Smartsheet for project management, and even competitive cloud-based office suites like Zoho. For those with fancier tastes, there are business process modeling and workflow suite as well, and even pay-as-you-go technical support services.

Much is made of the huge disparity between Google’s ad business revenue and its seemingly endless list of freebies and giveaways. But here is a true counter example: by making it possible to deploy and sell applications on their vast cloud infrastructure, they are opening up new opportunities for software developers and (re-) monetizing their own infrastructure. A great strategic move, on a par with Apple‘s iTunes behemoth and the Amazon commerce platform. Well done.

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