The software news that has developers everywhere talking is the benefit of doing business on Google's new Apps Marketplace. At Google's annual developer conference last year, three executives of software startups that build small business funding applications for the cloud gave speeches about how the Apps Marketplace has been hugely profitable for them.

Since that time the Google connection has continued to be golden for these companies, two of which have been sold to larger companies following the rapid growth in their customer base. The third, Atlassian, builds software tools that help companies streamline their product development. They recently won a $60 million funding round from Palo Alto-based Accel Partners. The two companies that were acquired, SlideRocket and Manymoon, are part of a wave of acquisitions of startups that sell popular apps on Google's online Web store for businesses.