Google just added the equivalent of an app store to Google Drive that lets you find Drive-enabled third-party apps like HelloFax, SlideRocket and the Open Office Document Reader right from within the service. Once installed, these apps now also live right in the Google Drive ‘Create’ menu. Until now, users had to go through the Chrome Web Store to find Drive-enabled third-party apps.
As Google’s Nicolas Garnier writes this morning, the Drive SDK allows developers to offer users “an experience similar to how Google Docs and Google Sheets interact with Drive.” Currently, there are about a hundred web apps that use the Drive SDK to integrate with Google Drive. This integration, for example, includes the ability to open files in a third-party app directly from the Drive UI and to start new documents from the Google Drive ‘Create’ menu, as well as ways to export and convert Google Docs.
In this new iteration of Google Docs, these third-party apps also get first billing in the ‘Create’ menu and a new “Connect Your Apps” button at the bottom of the menu puts a stronger spotlight on this slowly growing ecosystem of Drive-connected apps.
Developers who currently list their Drive-enabled apps in the Chrome Web Store won’t have to do anything new. The information will automatically be pulled into Google Drive collection.
