OMEN
04-09-2008, 11:30 AM
It wants developers to run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure
Google Inc. launched a preview release of its new Google App Engine yesterday, touting it as a way for developers to run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure.
Google App Engine is aimed at giving developers access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, thus making it easier for developers to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy loads and large amounts of data, Google said.
The App Engine development environment will include dynamic Web serving, persistent storage, automatic scaling and load balancing, Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail, and a full-featured local development environment, according to Google.
"In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run Web applications," said Kevin Gibbs, technical lead for Google App Engine in a blog post. "Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications."
Every Google App Engine application will have up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month, Google said. In the future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing resources as needed, Google added. The preview version is available for free to the first 10,000 developers who sign up.
Early reviews of Google's App Engine were mostly favorable. Mark Hopkins, a blogger at Mashable who has used the system, noted that it has the promise of being "game-changing" in the cloud computing business. He did note, however, that the offering has some weaknesses, though he predicted that they won't keep it from quickly becoming a major player in cloud computing.
First, he noted that the Google App Engine requires developers to use Python as the development environment, which some will not know. Hopkins added that the platform is different from Amazon.com Inc.'s Elastic Compute cloud offering in that Amazon provides developers with an "a la carte" menu of choices of what to put in the cloud, such as a database, code or videos.
The Google App Engine, however, is designed to completely house a developer's service and to easily integrate with Google services. In addition, the App Engine requires users to have a Google account in order to access an application.
But, he predicted that the service is likely to be reliable because Google is known for being nearly immune to widespread outages.
"Who's the big winner here? Google, hands down," he added. "Unlike the Amazon cloud, developers don't appear to be asked to pay anything to host their apps here, but the trade-off is that all your users are going to need a Google account to use your application."
Phillip Lenssen, a blogger at Google Blogoscoped, added that Google might also have an eye on standardizing Web applications in its favor in the future with the App Engine.
"Using the App Engine, it's only a small step to use the integrated libraries to switch to a Google account for authentication for your site," he noted. "And the more sites make use of the Google account, the more powerful that account will become. Maybe in future releases of the App Engine, using other services by Google -- like their advertising framework -- will also be made temptingly easy. Instead of just being one of the Web's most successful players, perhaps Google continues trying to manufacture the board game itself."
Compworld
Google Inc. launched a preview release of its new Google App Engine yesterday, touting it as a way for developers to run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure.
Google App Engine is aimed at giving developers access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, thus making it easier for developers to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy loads and large amounts of data, Google said.
The App Engine development environment will include dynamic Web serving, persistent storage, automatic scaling and load balancing, Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail, and a full-featured local development environment, according to Google.
"In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run Web applications," said Kevin Gibbs, technical lead for Google App Engine in a blog post. "Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications."
Every Google App Engine application will have up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month, Google said. In the future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing resources as needed, Google added. The preview version is available for free to the first 10,000 developers who sign up.
Early reviews of Google's App Engine were mostly favorable. Mark Hopkins, a blogger at Mashable who has used the system, noted that it has the promise of being "game-changing" in the cloud computing business. He did note, however, that the offering has some weaknesses, though he predicted that they won't keep it from quickly becoming a major player in cloud computing.
First, he noted that the Google App Engine requires developers to use Python as the development environment, which some will not know. Hopkins added that the platform is different from Amazon.com Inc.'s Elastic Compute cloud offering in that Amazon provides developers with an "a la carte" menu of choices of what to put in the cloud, such as a database, code or videos.
The Google App Engine, however, is designed to completely house a developer's service and to easily integrate with Google services. In addition, the App Engine requires users to have a Google account in order to access an application.
But, he predicted that the service is likely to be reliable because Google is known for being nearly immune to widespread outages.
"Who's the big winner here? Google, hands down," he added. "Unlike the Amazon cloud, developers don't appear to be asked to pay anything to host their apps here, but the trade-off is that all your users are going to need a Google account to use your application."
Phillip Lenssen, a blogger at Google Blogoscoped, added that Google might also have an eye on standardizing Web applications in its favor in the future with the App Engine.
"Using the App Engine, it's only a small step to use the integrated libraries to switch to a Google account for authentication for your site," he noted. "And the more sites make use of the Google account, the more powerful that account will become. Maybe in future releases of the App Engine, using other services by Google -- like their advertising framework -- will also be made temptingly easy. Instead of just being one of the Web's most successful players, perhaps Google continues trying to manufacture the board game itself."
Compworld