Dr. Dobb's | Google in the Cloud

Google in the Cloud

Google introduces a beta of App Engine, a scalable cloud computing solution based on Google computing resources.

April 09, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/google-in-the-cloud/207100687

Google yesterday announced introductory access to Google App Engine, its entry into the cloud computing space. With it, developers can access Google's computing resources, infrastructure and storage to serve web applications written in Python. Google says it plans to support other languages in the future, but for the time being, developers are limited to writing code in Python.

According to Google, App Engine provides:

dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies
persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions
automatic scaling and load balancing
APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
a fully featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer

Access to App Engine is currently free, and comes with 500 MB persistent storage and "enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month," according to Google. Google plans to offer more computing resources for a fee at a later date.