Productivity application start-up Zoho is in a tough position: it has to compete with Google Apps. That hasn't stopped the company from pushing forward and trying new stuff.
Case in point: Zoho's Marketplace, which launched Tuesday. Through the Marketplace, Zoho users can make a buck or two off of applications that they built with Zoho Creator, the company's drag-and-drop application development tool.
If you've made an application in Creator, you can list it for sale in the Marketplace and charge a fee, if you want. Zoho doesn't take a commission from the sale of applications, but if you use Creator (or any other Zoho app) more than its personal-use plan permits, you'll have to cough up a subscription fee. This goes for app creators as well--if a lot of people are using your applications, you'll have to pay too.
Zoho isn't trying to create a get-rich-quick scheme here. "There are many applications out there that are not available off the shelf but are needed in a particular use case or situation," an explanation from the company read, "but there is not enough (of a) market for vendors to offer such situated software, as the need could be specific to a use case or an individual/business."
In conjunction with the release of its Marketplace, Zoho also launched Version 3.0 of Creator.
Online-productivity suite Zoho announced on Wednesday that it now accepts Google and Yahoo logins. An executive from Zoho parent company AdventNet announced last month that Google login compatibility was on the way.
"For Google and Yahoo users who are curious about Zoho but don't want to set up another account, we've removed that hurdle," Zoho 'evangelist' Raju Vegsna said in a release Wednesday. "Users don't have to create a Zoho account to use Zoho applications. We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to try our online apps."
In addition to accepting Google and Yahoo logins for new Zoho accounts, the site also allows existing members to synchronize with their Google or Yahoo accounts.
This required collaboration with both Google and Yahoo--interesting, because Google operates Google Docs, a bigger rival to Zoho. But it's just the latest data portability announcement to emerge in the past few months, what with Yahoo supporting the OpenID standard and teaming up with MySpace.com on its Data Availability project, as well as Google launching its Friend Connect initiative.
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