Google Apps
Originally published on macresearch.org, around 2008. Reproduced from the author's archive; some links may no longer resolve.
Google to Host Everything
Google today made an announcement that may in time be seen as a watershed: Google App Engine. In a nutshell, Google will make the barrier to creating web apps much lower, by making deployment trivial, and issues of scaling go away altogether. Google App Engine is a complete stack for web apps, from the SDK used to develop dynamic web apps, to data storage, database access, and hosting on Google’s own servers.
Interestingly, Google chose Python as the base language, though other languages and run times will likely be introduced in time. Google use Python internally, and even employ the founding father of the language, Guido van Rossum. Django is also included, which is a powerful web development framework that has been largely overshadowed by the hype surrounding Ruby on Rails. Google’s official sanctioning of Python and Django is something of a coup, and should deliver a handy boost to each.
The concept of Google App Engine is not entirely new. Amazon have been offering a loosely-coupled assortment of services (link no longer available) for some time, and smaller hosting companies, like WebFaction (link no longer available) (click here (link no longer available) to use my affiliate link), offer relatively painless hosting and deployment of a wide variety of web app frameworks, including Django. But Google is the first to come with a complete solution that scales.
It will be interesting to see how the web developer community reacts to the new service. On the one hand, it is nice that Google is taking the pain out of deploying web apps. Usually, this involves a developer having to set up a MySQL database, and ensure that the web server has the right modules installed and is correctly configured. In short, it can be a painful process. Google has reduced this to a single command in terminal.
On the other hand, Google has imposed some pretty severe restrictions at this point, by basing App Engine on Python, Django, and sundry other frameworks. Unless you are using the tools Google supplies, it could be quite restrictive. There may be some backlash from those developing with the Ruby on Rails framework, and I would expect both Ruby and Rails to be added to Google App Engine in the not too distant future.
Will App Engine suddenly lead to a flux of new and fantastic web apps? I doubt it. It will make deploying and maintaining apps much easier, but this will just save developers some time, rather than encouraging many more great apps. Web sites for which scaling is really an issue are relatively few, and if your site is popular enough for scaling to a problem, you can probably afford to pay other developers to solve it for you. App Engine probably won’t change things much. Anyone capable of writing good web apps is already doing it — Google is just going to give them their weekends back.