The Skinny on Google's App Engine - SaaS Week

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April 08, 2008
The Skinny on Google's App Engine

The big SaaS and Web 2.0 news of the day seems to be the Google App Engine. In a press release yesterday, Google announced a preview release of the app engine, a tool that allows developers to deploy code on Google's infrastructure and then integrate it with other Google services.

TechNewsWorld reported on the news, quoting a Google exec as saying the app engine is designed to make launching of web applications as easy as launching a blog. Right now the app engine supports only applications written in Python 2.5.2 but Google plans to support other languages over time. The offering makes Google a competitor with Amazon and Salesforce.com in offering cloud computing services, the article concludes.

An article in DailyTech specifically speculated that Google was targeting Amazon's popular Amazon Web Services offering, and that one factor that could sweeten the deal in Google's favor is that developers can use Google's APIs. Some analysts wondered whether Google's offering would force Amazon to cut prices for its cloud computing offerings.

Finally, in considering the new offering, ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick wondered whether Google App Engine would be "history's next step or a monopolistic boondoggle." Kirkpatrick pointed out that the offering could be compared to Nick Carr's The Big Switch and raised some interesting points, such as whether or not there would be barriers for developers who chose to leave the App Engine after time.