April 7th, 2008
Google announces App Engine: Should Amazon worry?
Just like most of us thought, Google’s new App Engine appears to be a direct competitor for Amazon web services. And in true Google fashion, the service is being opened up to the first 10,000 developers that request an account — free of charge. Of course, that will only last until the beta program is over, but according to Brady Forrest, the system will remain free to some extent — yet to be determined.
This new service is not identical to Amazon’s offering though — it’s more of an all-in-one solution. Amazon’s web services (EC2, SimpleDB and S3) each perform a unique purpose, and can be used together or separately as part of another project. Google App Engine on the other hand requires developers to host their apps there, process requests, and use their database (BigTable) with this single unified system that does the following: [source]
- Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
- Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
- Automatic scaling and load balancing
- Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
- Fully featured local development environment
One drawback is the requirement that currently forces developers to use Python as their language. While Python is a powerful language that Google uses all the time for applications, there are large pockets of developers who are only familiar with other popular languages like PHP and Ruby.
Now that I’ve had a chance to hear what Google is actually doing, I am starting to wonder if Google really is doing this to simplify the acquisition process. It would take no time at all for Google to snap up and rebrand a service that are already using Google’s infrastructure — no more messy porting.
I can’t wait to start playing around with this new service — unfortunately, all available accounts have already taken. To get on the list, click here.
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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