Google App Engine Body-Slams Amazon Web Services

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on April 9, 2008
in Open Source, Software, Technology and Virtualization
.

I love it.image

Google makes a strong move into the scalable web services arena with the introduction of Google App Engine. Features include:

  • Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
  • Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
  • Automatic scaling and load balancing
  • Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
  • Fully featured local development environment

I had the chance to run through the Google App Engine documentation last night. It’s very well done (especially since it is just a Preview Release).

Yeah, it’s all Python, but there’s nothing wrong with that - Python Rocks.

Yeah, they want you to use Django, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Django Rocks. And, if you don’t think so, just upload any Pure Python framework and roll your own. It’s easy.

But, how does it compare to Amazon EC2 + S3 + SimpleDB?

It’s completely different.

Google App Engine is a much, much higher level toolkit and abstraction layer. Here’s how I think about it:

Amazon Web Services gives you the logs and asks you to build yourself a cabin. Amazon Web Services lets you change that cabin into a chateaux or a lodge, but you’ve got to wield the hammer.

Google App Engine gives you a log cabin and asks you to move in, invite your friends, and start to party. When the party gets too big, Google App Engine builds you a bigger cabin, chateaux, or lodge. You keep partying.

I believe the simplest approach wins.

I love the Amazon Web Services guys (and have written many articles about what they are up to). I’m a big fan. The fact is that Google App Engine is severely limited in what it can and cannot do. They sky’s the limit with Amazon Web Services, however. AWS pretty much does whatever you want. Just write some code.

Google App Engine will be wildly successful because it makes building and serving a scalable web site super simple (if you know Python).

There is a place for both tools, but Google App Engine will see so much more variety of services.

I added my name to the invite list… Pick me. Pick me. Pick me.

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7 Responses to “Google App Engine Body-Slams Amazon Web Services”

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  1. 1 Chris Yeh
    April 10, 2008 at 5:46 am

    Brian,

    I agree that App Engine is fantastic for developing apps, and great for Google. But it’s unclear to me that hardcore entrepreneurs will be willing to use if for their businesses.

    To me, using App Engine limits you to one major buyer: Google. No way Microsoft, Amazon, or Oracle wants to buy you and keep you on App Engine. And it’s not likely that it will be trivial to port from App Engine to a more standard stack.

  2. 2 Brian Berliner
    April 10, 2008 at 6:27 am

    Hi Chris,

    Good point.

    However, I think it’s kind of a “hurt me with that problem” issue. If you have built something that is successful enough that somebody wants to pay millions of dollars for it, then you will be able to find a way to transition it off of the Google infrastructure. Nobody thought that Microsoft would buy Hotmail because it all ran on FreeBSD UNIX servers. However, they did. And, spent years converting pieces over to Windows - heck, there probably still is UNIX in there even now. Why? Because it was valuable. The infrastructure was not valuable - the application and user base was.

    Point is, the acquirer cares first and foremost about the application, its users, and how much money they can make from the intellectual capital. That is “core”. The infrastructure is a “context” piece of the business - yeah, it has to run on a scalable infrastructure, but that’s really not going to define the valuation for the acquirer. They may argue that it does during your M&A negotiations, but like I said… Hurt me with that problem!

    -Brian

  1. 1 Lars-Schenk.com » Google App Engine - Eldorado für Entwickler
    Pingback on Apr 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    [...] Brian Berliner beschreibt es in seinem Blog ganz treffend: Amazon Web Services gives you the logs and asks you to build yourself a cabin. Amazon Web Services lets you change that cabin into a chateaux or a lodge, but you’ve got to wield the hammer. Google App Engine gives you a log cabin and asks you to move in, invite your friends, and start to party. When the party gets too big, Google App Engine builds you a bigger cabin, chateaux, or lodge. You keep partying. [...]

  2. 2 An Example Of Why Google App Engine Will Win at Brian Berliner’s Brain
    Pingback on Apr 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    [...] Register google_ad_client = “pub-1228314107236004″; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60; google_ad_format = “468×60_as”; google_ad_type = “text”; google_ad_channel =”"; « Google App Engine Body-Slams Amazon Web Services [...]

  3. 3 Google App Engine Ported To Amazon EC2 at Brian Berliner’s Brain
    Pingback on Apr 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    [...] Lock-In" has been a major concern for folks getting their first look at Google App Engine. I commented on exactly that point in one of the responses to my earlier post. My feeling was that the framework would be largely [...]

  4. 4 IPython on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at Brian Berliner’s Brain
    Pingback on Apr 18th, 2008 at 8:49 am

    [...] Google App Engine was release with native support for pure Python web applications. It’s now really easy to write and deploy Python applications that are extremely scalable on top of a solid(and portable)  infrastructure. [...]

  5. 5 Another Example Of Google App Engine’s Strength at Brian Berliner’s Brain
    Pingback on Apr 18th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    [...] basically a REST interface to the Google BigTable database service that is included with Google App Engine. This is simple, yet powerful stuff. And, this is just another example - see my earlier post on [...]

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