Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine

Google isn’t just talking about hosting applications in the cloud any more. Tonight at 9pm PT they’re launching Google App Engine (Update: The site is live), an ambitious new project that offers a full-stack, hosted, automatically scalable web application platform. It consists of Python application servers, BigTable database access (anticipated here and here) and GFS data store services.

At first blush this is a full on competitor to the suite of web services offered by Amazon, including S3 (storage), EC2 (virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database).

Unlike Amazon Web Services’ loosely coupled architecture, which consists of several essentially independent services that can optionally be tied together by developers, Google’s architecture is more unified but less flexible. For example, it is possible with Amazon to use their storage service S3 independently of any other services, while with Google using their BigTable service will require writing and deploying a Python script to their app servers, one that creates a web-accessible interface to BigTable.

What this all means: Google App Engine is designed for developers who want to run their entire application stack, soup to nuts, on Google resources. Amazon, by contrast, offers more of an a la carte offering with which developers can pick and choose what resources they want to use.

Google Product Manager Tom Stocky described the new service to me in an interview today. Developers simply upload their Python code to Google, launch the application, and can monitor usage and other metrics via a multi-platform desktop application.

More details from Google:

Today we’re announcing a preview release of Google App Engine, an application-hosting tool that developers can use to build scalable web apps on top of Google’s infrastructure. The goal is to make it easier for web developers to build and scale applications, instead of focusing on system administration and maintenance.

Leveraging Google App Engine, developers can:

• Write code once and deploy. Provisioning and configuring multiple machines for web serving and data storage can be expensive and time consuming. Google App Engine makes it easier to deploy web applications by dynamically providing computing resources as they are needed. Developers write the code, and Google App Engine takes care of the rest.
• Absorb spikes in traffic. When a web app surges in popularity, the sudden increase in traffic can be overwhelming for applications of all sizes, from startups to large companies that find themselves rearchitecting their databases and entire systems several times a year. With automatic replication and load balancing, Google App Engine makes it easier to scale from one user to one million by taking advantage of Bigtable and other components of Google’s scalable infrastructure.
• Easily integrate with other Google services. It’s unnecessary and inefficient for developers to write components like authentication and e-mail from scratch for each new application. Developers using Google App Engine can make use of built-in components and Google’s broader library of APIs that provide plug-and-play functionality for simple but important features.

Google App Engine: The Limitations

The service is launching in beta and has a number of limitations.

First, only the first 10,000 developers to sign up for the beta will be allowed to deploy applications.

The service is completely free during the beta period, but there are ceilings on usage. Applications cannot use more than 500 MB of total storage, 200 million megacycles/day CPU time, and 10 GB bandwidth (both ways) per day. We’re told this equates to about 5M pageviews/mo for the typical web app. After the beta period, those ceilings will be removed, but developers will need to pay for any overage. Google has not yet set pricing for the service.

One current limitation is a requirement that applications be written in Python, a popular scripting language for building modern web apps (Ruby and PHP are among others widely used). Google says that Python is just the first supported language, and that the entire infrastructure is designed to be language neutral. Google’s initial focus on Python makes sense because they use Python internally as their scripting language

Will Google Buy Adobe to Challenge Silverlight?

Does Google have a rich Web application in the works, perhaps code-named Gash or Googlelight? Or does it deal for Adobe to corner the market in one fell swoop?

Google’s advantages over Microsoft in leveraging the Internet to make money and attract users are well documented, but there is one area Google isn’t playing in where Microsoft seems to have Google beaten: rich media applications.

Microsoft March 5 took its Silverlight rich Web app into its second beta. High-tech media and analysts love to position Silverlight as an alternative to Adobe’s Flash technology, found on 98 percent of browsers worldwide.

If Microsoft could corral just a slice of the market Flash commands in this age of AJAX and rich Web apps, it would stand to make some serious cash in the Internet economy that Google aims to rule.

Google, art thou lost at sea? Is there a rich Web application in the works, perhaps code-named Gash or Googlelight? Or do you deal for Adobe to corner the market in one fell swoop?

A Google spokesperson provided eWEEK with its stock answer to questions about future plans, noting that its mission is to make all the world’s information universally accessible. “We are constantly innovating to continue to deliver on our mission, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.”

The lack of an outright denial is conspicuous, suggesting that the search and applications maker has something up its sleeve. eWEEK polled some experts who follow the rich Web app space.

Gartner analyst Ray Valdes told eWEEK Google has purchased companies in image processing and graphics that could provide rich Web app capabilities.

For example, Google acquired Keyhole as the foundation for Google Earth, later adding SketchUp for 3-D modeling. The company also nabbed photo mapping provider Panoramio and graphic visualization tool Gapminder.

These technologies and the engineers associated with them, coupled with Google’s close ties to the Firefox browser community, give Google the means to create a Silverlight killer.

Valdes said Microsoft created Silverlight as a lightweight alternative to its own Windows Presentation Foundation, which he said has been a tough swallow for many enterprises. His point is that Google should strike now while Microsoft scrambles to bring Silverlight to market.

“If they are at all on the ball, they’re not going to let a competitor gain an advantage here unnecessarily,” Valdes said. “You could even make the case that if they don’t respond, heads should roll later.”

Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond told eWEEK that while he’s seen no evidence Google is preparing an answer to Silverlight, he wouldn’t bet against it.

On the flip side of the coin, he said Google is already making some pretty significant investments in AJAX with Google Web Toolkit and Google Gears. With Android, they also set up a mobile platform which could use their existing AJAX assets as well, he said.

Hammond also noted Google would be challenged on how to get broad distribution of a player to compete with Flash, which is what Microsoft is wrestling with now.

“The obvious answer would be through YouTube, so that’s where I’d keep a close watch,” Hammond said. “Since they just went through the process of re-encoding media into H.264 to support the iPhone, they could in theory create an H.264 compatible player without screwing that deal up.”

IDC’s Melissa Webster threw some cold water on this theory, noting that Google doesn’t need to have its own technology to improve playback and user experience. “They can use Adobe’s stuff [player if they need one at some point; streaming servers if they decide to do real streaming; online editing tools; etc.],” Webster told eWEEK.

Sasha Kouznetsov, founder and president of Web presentation software maker, Spresent, also doubted Google’s entry into the market, noting that Google would be more likely to endorse the open-source SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) foundation technology.

Hammond said Google could be just as likely to buy Adobe.

“Why build your own when you can buy something that’s ubiquitous in the market already?” Hammond said.

Valdes said he’s been thinking about that possibility for awhile, noting that Adobe is a midsize company competing with heavyweights and that Microsoft long ago set the Flash proprietor in its sights. A Google-Adobe union would give Google rich Web app market share and allow Adobe to grow its business.

Webster doused this theory, saying that Google doesn’t need to buy Adobe to accomplish what it wants with rich interaction. She added that Adobe’s core business is packaged software for the desktop and not the cloud computing model Google espouses. “That would be a distraction.”

Whether Google pulls the trigger on Adobe or not is anyone’s guess, but Hammond noted that it would be an interesting response to Microsoft’s impending purchase of Yahoo.

That much is certain.

Google owes business to Microsoft

Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said Tuesday that competitor Google owes its business in part to Microsoft and that his company is not concerned about losing its position as an innovator in the technology market to the search and advertising leader.

“If we didn’t succeed at the PC, they wouldn’t have a business,” Mundie said of Google, in comments made via Webcast at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

He said Google was able to grow so quickly because it introduced a new business model for the Web at just the right time. “It wasn’t that many years ago that Google didn’t exist,” Mundie said. But now that the industry and competitors like Microsoft are catching up to Google’s online advertising strategy, “I don’t think they can do anything we can’t do,” he said.

In fact, Microsoft’s longevity versus its relatively new competitor gives it a substantial advantage long term over Google, Mundie said. “I’d like to think we’re strategically open-minded, we’ve made adjustments [to our business model],” Mundie said. “I’d like to see Google and someone else come up with something that really threatens our business model.”

Part of that business model is to combine forces with Yahoo to compete with Google in the advertising market. Microsoft is currently in the middle of what could end up becoming a hostile takeover of Yahoo, after the company rejected the software giant’s $44.6 billion cash and stock offer. Microsoft is now rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for Yahoo.

While Mundie acknowledged that he couldn’t discuss much about the ongoing Yahoo proceedings publicly, he did concede that Microsoft is eager to acquire the company and move ahead on the Web. “Right now, we’d just like to close the Yahoo deal,” he said.

Even if the deal does not go through, however, he said Microsoft is confident its own Web strategy, fueled by a combination of software and services rather than an entirely Web-based portfolio, will eventually help the company catch up to Google — barring a “major screw-up” on Microsoft’s part.

Moreover, Microsoft has a multiyear lead on Google in providing software in mobile phones, another area where the Internet company aims to compete. “They’re sort of late to the cell-phone thing,” Mundie said, noting Microsoft’s success with its Windows Mobile OS, which powers millions of smart phones worldwide.

Google founder spooked by Microsoft bid

Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin called Microsoft Corp.’s takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. an “unnerving” maneuver that threatens innovation on the Internet.

Brin reiterated the Internet search leader’s position that a merger could violate antitrust laws and harm Internet users.

Brin made the comment after an event at the Mountain View-based company’s headquarters for the Google Lunar X Prize, a race to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon.

“The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies,” Brin told The Associated Press after the event. “And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving.”

Shortly after Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) unveiled its surprise $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) earlier this month, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond argued in a company blog posting that a merger between companies that control the Internet’s two most heavily trafficked Web portals could lead to abuses. Those could be limiting users’ ability to easily access competing products, from e-mail to instant messaging to Web-based services, such as those Google offers.

Microsoft has argued that it’s committed to protecting innovation on the Internet and that scuttling the deal would allow Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) to become even more dominant on the Internet than it already is.