Google Seeds a Software Marketplace

There has been a lot of talk in the past week about Google App Engine, how Google is opening up its brawny and massive infrastructure for developers to run their applications on. It's an interesting move, taken from Amazon's Web services playbook. The basic idea is to turn one of Google's strengths into something like a utility -- just tap into its infrastructure as you would turn on a faucet.

Much more quiet is the discussion of another move that Google made to offer a utility-like service. It's called Google Solutions Marketplace, and in this case it's following a playbook strategy that was pioneered by Salesforce.com, which launched its AppExchange a few years back.

A year ago, Google saw that there were a lot of companies and developers creating programs, so it set up a "gallery" for customers to find them. It must have worked well, because Google is beefing it up now. The move could strengthen the company's hand in the enterprise-software market.

It doesn't seem like Google is gunning for Salesforce's market though. Its Solutions Marketplace focused for now on programs for Google customers. And Techcrunch recently suggested that not only are Salesforce and Google willing to work together, they may even combine.

While Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff might be happy to sell Salesforce to Oracle for $75 a share, he might be even happier to sell it to Google. Buying Salesforce would certainly turbocharge Google's efforts to sell into enterprise accounts.