google app engine

As TechCrunch anticipated, Google launched App Engines today, a new service that “lets you run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure.” The service currently supports Python only, but Google says they are looking forward to add more languages in the future. It offers database querying, “automatic scaling and load balancing” and API that let’s the application to send out email. It let’s you to run your application on “the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable.” [Official Google Blog] You can also integrate with other Google service very easily.

The service is currently free, but Google has plan to let people buy additional resources “at competitive market prices” in the near future. Some of the current limits are:

  • Three apps per developer
  • 500MB storage per app
  • ~10GB incoming/outgoing bandwidth per day
  • 2.5 million datastore (database) calls per day

I think limits are pretty generous for a free account, it should be enough for most small to medium websites. Although Python will definitely turn a lot of developers away, but on the other hand, offering free hosting and computing power will attract a lot more people into learning Python. Well, guess I should get out my Python for Dummies again (Python kills me, seriously). :)