What Needs to Change in the Chrome Web Store?

So, what does need to change in the Chrome Web Store? That in itself is a loaded question. The idea of the Chrome Web Store is not a new concept but with how long the store has been around you would hope to see better quality of apps as well as more apps.

The Chrome Web Store has been slow growing and it has very little attention from people that are using Chrome. The numbers of people that have installed apps from the app store is very little compared to the number of people that have the Chrome web browser installed on their computer. The Chrome Web Store for the most part right now only contains links to websites that say they are "apps". Google has slowly been trying to change this by implementing the apps for your desktop but that just added more confusion to an already confusion app store.

The first think that Google should address in the Web Store is the confusion. The general user doesn't understand the difference between extensions, apps, and apps for your desktop.

There shouldn't be so many different types of apps. In my personal opinion the apps that are just links should be removed. People already have bookmarks to their favorite sites, they don't need to have a store tricking them in to thinking they are apps when they are not. Secondly, the apps for the desktop should be the only apps there are and they should be renamed to apps. The apps for your desktop are actual apps that install so they should be called apps. The apps for your desktop actually run offline and outside of the browser. They are allowed to access local resources and control even the power settings. That is what makes an app an app. The third thing that needs to change, again in my opinion is an implementation of either an SDK or design guidelines. One thing that really helped Android's success is that there is an app design guideline and there is also a SDK. Having these for the Chrome Web Store will improve the quality of the apps as well as the consistency. The majority of the apps now are simple links to web pages and as I stated earlier, people already have bookmarks, why do they need a second one?

Google should really narrow down what they want to do with the Chrome Web Store. They should start to focus more on getting developers to make actual apps for the Chrome OS platform which should encourage the adoption of Chromebooks even more. Chromebooks have been selling at a much higher rate lately and if they have a more solid app market the possibilities would be endless.