Chrome Web Store now lets developers sell extensions and themes

Google on Tuesday announced new developer tools and services for the Chrome Web Store, with the aim to help automate the publishing process, and monetise products. The update is focused on easy app, extension and theme management options for developers.

The search giant made the announcement on its Chromium Blog, in a post titled 'New monetization and publishing options in the Chrome Web Store'.

With the changes, developers can now be able to offer packaged apps as free trials. Packaged apps are those apps created by the developer that do not use browser action or page action, and are capable of running offline. Chrome Web Store managed in-app purchases have also been added to packaged apps.

The Google Chrome update also brings along the option for the developers to sell their Chrome extensions and themes. While themes can only be paid for up-front, extensions can be offered as free trials, or subscriptions. Also new to extensions is Chrome Web Store managed in-app purchases.

Easy payment options for apps, extensions, and themes have also been included, ditching the old method of using payment tokens for each sale.

Google has also improved the developer dashboard, where they can now enable or disable products (including in-app products), provide localized descriptions, and set prices for different regions, with the Chrome Web Store managing the licensing.

However, the managing licences of the extensions and themes remain with Google. Additionally, the developers will now be able to "programmatically create, update and publish items in the Web Store" via the newly expanded Chrome Web Store API. Google adds, "If you have an automated build and deployment process, we hope you will be able to use this API to integrate the Web Store publishing flow into your existing process."

Last month, Google announced its partnership with VMWare, a US firm which is known to offer cloud software and virtualisation services, to help users access Windows through Chrome OS. The access to Windows OS is possible through virtualisation software dubbed VMware Horizon DaaS (Desktop as a Service) paired with VMware's Blast HTML5 technology, which will help users manage their Windows desktop, data and other applications through their Chromebooks and Chrome OS machines.