Google had a big enterprise announcement yesterday for their Apps Marketplace [TechCrunch]. It is essentially a set of extensions for you website. Anyone using Google Apps will be able to use the collection of cloud-based apps in their websites. Google has opened up several existing APIs so that third party developers can integrate their products as tightly as possible. The apps will be free and paid with Google taking a 20% cut instead of the 30% they get in the Android Market. In addition they charge a one time fee of $100 for developers to enroll in the program for unlimited apps. This is much steeper than the $25 for Android but much less than the $100 yearly for Apple. The higher one time fee reflects the business rather than consumer market and the lower revenue cut reflects Google’s encouragement of developers to get on board. Most of the apps will likely benefit the employees or back-end users more than the guests to the site but potential is great in both areas. The back-end of my personal site is Google Apps so if I start using any of the apps I will be sure to review them here.

In a somewhat quieter announcement, Google added bike routes to Maps yesterday [Gizmodo]. Like public transit, it is only available in select cities [currently 150, US only]. The bike routes take into account many different factors including hills, dedicated bike paths and congested streets. I don’t have a bike on campus so I can’t give it the hands on but if any of you have bikes and decent weather, let me know how it goes.