Google Woos Cloud Developers With Mobile Backend Starter

Search and data giant Google is continuing its bid to also be known as an app giant with the release to software application development professionals of news tools for its App Engine cloud service.

The company has released its Mobile Backend Starter under the justification (or suggestion if you are less convinced) that powering mobile applications from servers sitting on top of a hosted environment can be a headache.

As a product in its own right, the Mobile Backend Starter is comprised of a data storage server and a client library for Android. This library provides a means of managing communication between the application itself and the App Engine cloud.

The Google developer blog explains that Mobile Backend Starter is a one-click deployable, complete mobile backend that exists as a ready-to-deploy, general-purpose cloud backend and a general-purpose client-side framework for Android.

According to the Google developer blog, "Mobile Backend Starter gives you everything you need to rapidly set up a backend for your app, without needing to write any backend code. It includes a server that stores your data with App Engine and a client library and sample app for Android that make it easy to access that data. You can also add support for Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and continuous queries that notify your app of events you are interested in. To keep users data secure, Mobile Backend Starter also includes built-in support for Google Authentication."

Features of Mobile Backend Starter include: cloud data storage, messaging, push notifications (data updated on one device is automatically available on all devices with GCM for Android), continuous queries, and Google authentication and authorization.