Google has announced a Google App Engine which allows you to run your own applications on Google's infrastructure. It's a different approach from Amazon's EC2 which allows you to host your own virtual machines on their infrastructure. However, they are close enough to be competing. EC2 gives you your own VM allowing you to run about anything you'd like and then throws on top several additional services like Amazon Simple Storage Service, Simple DB, and Simple Queue Service service. App Engine allows you to deploy Python applications on Google's infrastructure, with other languages coming. It also offers a DB service as well as several other services (user management and mail, for example). Both have the promise of massive infrastructure on demand. App Engine provides it automatically while EC2 requires some tooling. In either case to truly take advantage of the service it seems you'll end up with - if not vendor lock in - a high barrier to moving to another vendor. Both are very interesting offerings and offer great solutions to scaling fast even as a small company. Which approach appeals the most to you (assuming Google will soon support your favorite language)? [Editor's note: who says Python isn't one's favorite language? Oh wait - I forgot some whitespace...]

These are both very exciting services and I think they will both create a major and profound change in the application development market because application deployment and administration is yet another barrier for any starting business. Looking at what Google has to offer here, I see a lot of stuff: you can develop an application, deploy on the Google cloud and consume many Google services as widgets, embed search capabilities, access to videos and forums and all of that is native to your application. Not only storage, but real applications. Couple of questions and thoughts about the issue: - What other business models will Google create from this service in addition to hosting/transaction/storage/bandwidth business models? Will they utilize the information created from people surfing to several applications hosted by them? Provide cross-site data about the users to site owners? - Is Google planning to offer a hosted development environment to complement their offering? - GWT support sometimes in the near future? - Are some sort of web-services (not only HTTP get query strings) supported? this would open up a zillion possibilities. - Any mash up API layer planned soon by these two giants?

It already supports HTML and JS, so technically GWT is supported. You can write your server-side in Py and you got an end-to-end AJAX web app story

Does it support Java?

No, no java.

Java sucks

Java sucks

It's hard to argue with that, especially with all the really strong supporting evidence you've provided. Keep up the good work!

I like the look of heroku for rails app hosting and development... http://heroku.com/

Too late, only the first 10.000 developers get a test account.

In either case to truly take advantage of the service it seems you'll end up with - if not vendor lock in - a high barrier to moving to another vendor.

I smell a new standard coming... maybe JSR Web App Hosting Specification? ;-)

I have been looking at all the fuzz Google App Engine has created, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot see it as a serious competitor of EC2 (at least not yet). Amazon EC2, although it requires some tooling and image configuration, gives you full freedom. Many shops are using it for all sorts of deployments, from standard websites to complex grid infrastructures. For example, many of our customers are able to deploy GridGain (open source Java grid computing product) on EC2 with minimal effort. We are currently also working on migrating our own distributed JUnits from dedicated data center to on-demand EC2 cloud. Google App Engine, on the other hand, targets a totally different market. The choice of supporting only Python and limiting external connections to HTTP(S) says to me that they only care about WebSite deployments at this point. It is a Python Web Hosting data center. You simply don't have the same flexibility here as with EC2, but if you are a Python website, then this could potentially become an ideal choice for you. But hang on a second... After all we could always rewrite our product in Python ;-) Best, Dmitriy Setrakyan GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

Funny but it seems that GAE could have been easily created on top of Amazon EC2. In fact, GAE is nothing more than a good shared Python hosting (no threads, no local drive access, etc.) – perfect application to run on Amazon EC2. As Dmitriy mentioned – these are two very different things. Best, Nikita Ivanov. GridGain – Grid Computing Made Simple

Hey, you guys, Don't you think it is obvious that other development stacks will get the same support? Ok, it's not the most flexible platform, it's focused on the web while EC practically does everything, but the generic principle is the same and obviously a competition in this segment. Y.

I blogged about it here. Best, Dmitriy Setrakyan GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

Google has announced a Google App Engine

Ok, now the problem is that I _need_ an account. The 10000 user initial limit has already been reached but I just cannot live without it anymore. Help, please, An addicted google maniac

Only quibble with this service so far is that it isn't true REST. It is simply GET-based RPC. Call me a purist but I think it is bad mojo to have all your PUT, DELETE, UPDATE, actions be GETS. Too much like having the "car blow up now" button next to horn on the steering wheel. Or, to be less cheeky, GETs should not have side-effects.