Google App Engine

Creating a web app is nowadays easy. We have tons of good frameworks, good tools etc. and most of them are free. One thing that is also now emerging is that the infrastructure - servers, databases - are also free or very cheap. Just look at the Google App Engine. Its idea is pretty neat. You get Google's servers and infrastructure for free for your web services&applications. Only when it starts to attract more users you need to pay. Google itself is promising that the initial quota should be enough for around 5 million web page loads per month - pretty big.

What does it mean for developer? I had to give a try for it and it seamed to be really easy to get started. Currently coding is done with Python and the guys at Google are hinting that in future other environments will be also supported. Google provides own light weight framework which is easy to use. It however also supports pretty much any other Python based framework - you just need to use their database system. And why wouldn't you do that when you get their load balancing for free? Anyhow - you can get pretty far just by using the framework they provided. Documentation is also good. Too easy?

Google is doing lot to lower the barrier to enter web apps markets. With Google App Engine companies doesn't need to do any initial investments to the server infrastructure. They can pretty much try out if the service is going to fly until they need to pay. That has big impact on the risk and needed initial funding. I wouldn't be surprise if in near future there are tons of web apps running on Google's infrastructure.

Now back to coding...

Vroom, vroom engine