At Arctic Kiwi we are busy preparing Matchbook (our slant on CRM) for the Google Marketplace.

My first impressions of the Google Marketplace are very mixed. Firstly app promotion is poor at best. If we compare the homepage for the Google Marketplace with the upcoming Mac App store (or even the existing app store) you will see what i mean.

Google Marketplace promotes one app at a time and i have to click the navigation to see other “featured apps”. The app store homepage on the other hand is chock-full of promoted apps.
Also note the difference in the amount of text. I don’t really need that much information on the homepage.

The product pages on the Google Marketplace aren’t much better.

We get multiple large screenshots on the app store vs the one on the marketplace. The application name on the app store stands out against the rest of the text, compared to the application name on the marketplace that has the same visual importance as many of the other headings on the page.

Al in all I find the google marketplace very uninspiring and middle of the road when compared with the app store and soon to be released mac app store.

Lets hope they pick up their game soon!