Google just announced a web application infrastructure called Google App Engine. Unlike Amazon’s offerings of a la carte services, Google provides a sandbox to host your application using a Python runtime environment. In addition to the Python runtime, Google App Engine provides access to a data persistence layer, Google’s account management system, and mail.
The runtime environment includes Django, a popular web application framework designed to get your web application off the ground quickly. Google used it as a base and integrated it into their services. All of your application must be written in Python, so it seems like you will not be able to optimize of enhance functionality via C.
The main advantage here is leveraging Google’s scalability and reliability. There are few companies out their that manage their operations as well as Google and now they are offering a way for developers to take advantage of that. Anyone that has developed a server based application understands the hassle of deployment and management of your servers.
Googles win is additional usage of their services and as well as an injection of user data that Google can mine and use for their advertising.
Overall this is a great offering for Google. Not quite sure yet its for long term, large scale applications just yet, but its certainly great for getting an web application off the ground. If you’re a desktop developer in need of a web component, GAE seems like a great fit.
More on this as soon as my application gets approved.