Google Apps Engine
Some quick answers to what Google Apps Engine offers, and why you might want to care about it.
A few months ago, Joyent (and Dell, and Facebook) announced free hosting (for a year) to budding application developers. These free servers were designed to scale and help developers who had applications which “took off” in other words, in the world of widgets and Facebooks apps, it is a real scenario to have 12 users one day and then tens or hundreds of thousands of users the next.
I took one of these servers and it performed quite well, but the endless changes of terms is about to make me drop it, as is the cost of continuing the service.
Enter Google App Engine
In essense the Google App Engine is a free way to host stuff. Ofcourse Google would slap me for explaining it that simply, but for a majority of users, that is exactly what it is is good for.
In the unlikely scenario that you get like 5 million monthly users or more you might have to pay like 20 or 30 bucks to continue using it, (see more pricing and App engine details here) I don’t think anyone with 5 million users will complain 
I posed a couple of direct questions to some of the Google Apps representitives, and received itelligent, and blunt answers. Refreshing. Basically I noted that they were going up against a host of competitors who were often giving the same or more away.
Amazon has been wowing many developers with some great hosting options, and Joyent’s offer or a free year went over so well that they hardly could keep up with the demand.
They knew Joyent, Amazon and others were competitors, but felt (unsurprizingly) that their product was better.
I agree.
At Google I/O the announcement was made that Google App Engine was now accessible to everyone. To get yours, just go here.
Videos from Google about the App Engine have received a healthy viewership the video below has received around 150,000 views.
The amount of actual developers actually interacting with the Google products and APIs is very telling.
Google App Engine is something I personally like because it further takes away restrictions that people may have if they lack money or live in a country where there are no banks or credit cards.
Want to start a internet business? Cost: 0 dollars.
Good stuff Google.
