It’s been a busy year for Google — in more ways than one. Larry Page took over the reins from Eric Schmidt as CEO; there have been a steady stream of products hitting the deadpool (see the first graf here for some examples), while on the flip side, we’ve seen the arrival of Google+, Google Music, Google Wallet, and the purchase of Motorola — just to name few.
We’ve heard a lot about the success of Android, too, as well as Google’s ongoing redesign of its products: Search, Maps, Reader, Gmail — each are getting a new coat of paint.Android.com got a new look in November, YouTubelaunched “the biggest redesign in its history” yesterdaywith serious G+ integration, and on and on.
For all the coverage of smartphone proliferation, Android, search, G+, and so on, we haven’t heard as much about Google’s fledgling web apps market. We’re quietly sneaking up on the first birthday of the Chrome Web App Store. Google’s browser itself has been quickly gaining ground amongst the competition, as Robin reported last week that Chrome had passed Firefox to become the second largest browser in marketshare, with 25.7 percent. Based on those numbers, both Firefox and IE (which has the top share) have been in seemingly aggressive declines, while Chrome has been growing steadily.
As to Chrome’s app store, the early reports showed slow growth and sales, but in September the Web Store passed 30 million aggregate users. Then came the redesign.
In October, Google brought its wide-ranging redesign to its browser’s web app store, completely overhauling the store’s look and its user experience. In contrast to its launch, the web app store’s remake seemed to catalyze a big increase in traffic, across downloads, users, and total number of apps, with The Independent reporting that the web store’s apps have now hit ‘millions of downloads a day’
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