Google AppEngine
This evening at the second Google Campfire, they released their Amazon EC2/S3 killer, Google AppEngine. Based in Python (2.5.2 required), It’s a developer tool that gives access to Google’s computing infrastructure and BigTable, the distributed database that Google runs on.
From their blog, it features:
- 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
- A Fully featured local development environment
Unlike Amazon, they don’t give you a virtual machine image to work on. They run the application code for your app, and deal with everything else. All you’re maintaining is code, and small initial applications are free!
I’d love to try it out, but within hours, the first 10,000 developer signups were gone.
