Can Google-Apps-Script based apps be comercially deployed in the Apps Market?

Question

I want to develop a comercial App that works in connection with gmail, Google calendar and other Google products. For what I see, Google Apps Script would give me the required functionality but I cant seem to find the answer to a couple of deployment issues. In the Google Apps Marketplace article on Wikipedia I read this:

Google Apps Marketplace is a product of Google Inc. It is an online store designed to help people and organizations to discover, purchase, and deploy integrated cloud web applications that work with Google Apps (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, etc.) and with third party software. Some apps are free, some are paid for. Apps are based on Google APIs or on Google Apps Script.

But then, looking into the Google Apps documentation, the only distribution mechanisms I find are the "Script Gallery" which implies access to the source code by the end user and no comercial transaction or Chrome Web Store which is bound to Chrome Browser, while what I intend to do is aimed at Google Sites or Google Apps users and perfectly Browser Agnostic. My questions are:

• Can I bundle a Google Apps Script based App for sell in the Google Apps Marketplace ?
• Can I deploy it without the end users having access to the source code?

Answer 1

The short answer is no. Google Apps Script imposes daily quotas on all of their GAS APIs. These quotas cannot be extended in any way, so it is not feasible to deploy this on a commercial scale. You should take a look at Google Apps Engine which gives much more flexibility for what you want to do.

Answer 2

There is a workaround that I did in the past. I had an installation script (that ran as me) that collected user properties and the actual app script that ran as the individual user and referenced the user properties collected. At the time I didn't set user script properties but you could do that to bypass the first install script I would think. When the user installed they would get an email with the user script link and then they would authorize it separately. Install link was distributed through Google Checkout (deprecated now) but you could do electronic distribution through another venue. Not a traditional app distribution process by any means but maybe it will spark an idea for your specific case.

Answer 3

@Javier - we too arrived at the same conclusion. Google Apps Marketplace (GAM) deployment is just one of the channels to reach businesses but its the un-extendable Google Apps quotas that cripples a commercial deployment of a Google Apps Scripts (GAS) based WebApp.

We tried listing our webapp based on GAS directly into GAM but it failed their SSO requirements as there was no way to use domain-wide delegation to authorize the GAS permissions for the end users if the webapp ran as "user accessing the web app".

While we migrate to a fully stand-alone application, we have managed to deploy a restricted version of the app to GAM indirectly using a GAE instance as a proxy.

Here is how its deployed.

1. The GAM listing links to a GAE proxy app.

2. GAE proxy does GAM compliant SSO and redirects all subsequent access to our publicly accessible webapp in "run as me" mode.

3. GAE proxy passes on any domain data authorized by the GAM client to the webapp.

4. Implement security mechanism to block unauthorized access to the public webapp and accept calls ONLY from the GAE proxy.

Our current customers (very small businesses/startups) are fine with this security model, but I am afraid this will not scale for larger commercial deployment.

@mrschwen: we too are considering your exactly approach in mind to mitigate quota issues in case our app gets wider adoption until we are forced to move out of the GAS space, even though the end users will be forced to authorize our scripts which will run as 'user accessing the web app'