We now know that the Android Marketplace will launch on Tuesday of next week. Google has spent $10 Million in prizes in order to seed the marketplace. The complete list of the 50 finalist apps is located here. The list includes: cab4me, a way to locate cabs near you, gocart, an app for scanning barcodes and looking up prices online, Share Your Board, an application for whiteboard sharing. Its expected that companies like MySpace, Facebook, Pandora, Shazam, and Electronic Arts will all support the Android platform.

Google — unlike Apple — is passing 100% of the revenue back towards developers. This could be key — especially for micro-transactions. For example, its conceivable that you could buy “points” via an Android App, and the redeem these points for actual money or cash prizes later. The 30% haircut from Apple prohibits this.

The Android Store will be entirely open door. Register, Upload,  and you are in business. That potentially means: adult apps, apps with embedded malware, and knockoffs of trademarked games like Tetris and Scrabble.

With an open acceptance policy, the number of Android apps will soon eclipse the number of iPhone apps, but the overall quality will be significantly less.There could be a Google Base phenomena, where the marketplace quickly fills up with junk.

The key question is whether Apple is forced to change its restrictive policy as a result from the Google competitive threat.

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app category: Breaking News