I’m a big fan of Google App Engine. It’s like a cloud of hard working robots. You write applications, within sensible constraints. Google does all the hard work.
As food for thought on what you can achieve with so little effort on App Engine, here’s a 40 line app that will send and receive email over HTTP. Building an email gateway is a simple problem that’s hard to do well and tricky to scale. App engine makes it cheap and easy.
Can your cloud haz robots?
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7 Comments
I’m currently getting excited about app engine too - mainly through how easy it is to use and deploy with web2py - a wonderful framework for python people.
Posted by Tom A at 1:54 pm on 16 October, 2009.
App Engine is a wonderful piece of technology, it allows very rapid development, has a nice tool-set and is - as you mentioned - a very cost effective way to get up and running.
There is a serious issue with it however, and that is the EULA’s and Google’s Policies.
Recently while planning our latest startup I was assigned the task of evaluating a number of platforms and frameworks, Rails, Django, all the usual suspects. I settled on either Django or App Engine. App Engine won hands down as a platform, but was ultimately deemed a no go area after we dissected the privacy policy.
In a nutshell Google can use the data stored for their own purposes and you are subject to not only the GAE privacy policy but also Google’s generic PP. http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html
8.2 on the GAE TOS is also a gem…
_8.2. You agree that Google, in its sole discretion, may use your trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names and other distinctive brand features in presentations, marketing materials, customer lists, financial reports and Web site listings (including links to your website) for the purpose of advertising or publicizing your use of the Service._
Another pitfall with GAE is vendor lock in via GAE specific libraries - which are generally the most useful, but this is something I can live with 99% of the time.
In all it is a superb piece of software and platform, I use it daily, but I am very wary about building serious application on top of it.
Posted by Ray at 12:06 pm on 17 October, 2009.
Hey Ray,
Thanks for pointing that out. Personally I don’t care. I trust Google to be responsible. If I was really worried about particular data, I’d encrypt it. If there was hard evidence that I’m putting peoples sensitive data at significant risk, I’d reconsider.
If app engine or any other technology/platform helps me achieve my goals significantly quicker/cheaper/easier, then I’ll go with it.
Posted by Darragh Curran at 9:48 pm on 18 October, 2009.
Completely agree with you on that Darragh. My point is more about awareness than anything as data is generally the most valuable commodity. Not so much putting the data at risk - it should be a given Google is responsible - and more about ownership and who has rights to use that data once it is in the cloud.
It would be a rare occasion where it would be an issue for me, the case I pointed out above was one of those occasions. For what it’s worth I did not deem it a no go area after the research, the client did.
Posted by Ray at 1:13 pm on 19 October, 2009.
Cool.
This message http://www.mail-archive.com/google-appengine@googlegroups.com/msg18002.html from a Google employee makes the point that in order to provide the service they need certain rights to your code/data. It would be nice if their TOS clearly explained why they need each clause.
Posted by Darragh Curran at 1:38 pm on 19 October, 2009.
Ya gotta love legal ambiguity.
Posted by Ray at 2:47 pm on 19 October, 2009.
Dudes, I dont think the blog-link on the frontpage works in IE8 (?). Might want to check up on that - There is indeed a JS error there.
Posted by fred at 7:44 am on 22 October, 2009.