14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just rolled out what seems to be the most powerful web service for Amazon: App Engine. It is addressed to developers around the world and allows them to "run their applications on Google's infrastructure," as the provider explained in a press release published today. "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," Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead, Google App Engine, said about the new concept.
At this time, the new service is only available to 10,000 developers and all the seats have already been taken so, in case you want to sign up, you have to enter your name in the waiting list. "Unfortunately, space is limited during Google App Engine's preview release. As we expand, we'll invite more developers, but for now you'll have to wait," Google states on the sign-up screen.
Moreover, the service is free for the time being, but the resources allocated to every application are limited. The Mountain View company states that all the users "will be restricted to the free quota of 500MB of storage and enough CPU and network bandwidth to sustain around 5 million page views per month for a typical app." However, Google plans to release a paying system that would allow developers to use the engine for free, letting them buy additional resources if needed.
"Google has spent years developing infrastructure for scalable web applications," said Pete Koomen, a product manager at Google. "We've brought Gmail and Google search to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and we've built out a powerful network of datacenters to support those applications. Today we're taking the first step in making this infrastructure available to all developers."