Google App Engine: a new version and a preview of future plans
By Greg
D’Alesandre, Senior Product Manager, Google App EngineGoogle App Engine, which provides the
ability to develop and host applications on Google’s infrastructure, has grown tremendously
since it
launched
in preview status in 2008. More than 100,000 developers use App Engine every month
to deliver apps that dynamically scale with usage without the need to manage hardware or
software. App Engine now hosts more than 200,000 active apps that serve over 1.5 billion site
views daily.
Over the last three years, we’ve collected great feedback
from our customers and now believe that the biggest thing we can do to help our customers is
to graduate App Engine from preview status. When App Engine graduates from preview status,
which we expect to do in the second half of this year, we’ll add additional enterprise-grade
features that allow us to support many more business application scenarios. Graduation from
preview status also indicates a longer term commitment by Google to the product and provides a
deprecation policy whereby we will support prior versions of product APIs for a guaranteed
amount of time, allowing applications written to prior API specifications to continue to
function.
Today, we’re moving forward with our business focus with the
release of
App Engine
1.5.0 which includes Backends, improved Task Queues, a new experimental Go runtime,
and more:
- With Backends (for both Python and Java), App Engine can
now support applications that require long running and high memory processes. This feature
allows for new classes of applications such as report generation apps and custom search
engines to be hosted on the platform.
- The improvements to Task
Queues allow for applications to control how tasks are executed and easily
share the work using the new REST-based APIs. This API access expands App Engine’s
compatibility with other on-premise and cloud services, furthering our commitment to an open
development platform.
- With 1.5.0 we are launching an experimental
runtime for the Go Programming
Language. Go is an open source, statically typed, compiled language with a
dynamic and lightweight feel. It’s also an interesting new option for App Engine because Go
apps will be compiled to native code, making Go a good choice for more CPU-intensive tasks. As
of today, the App Engine SDK for Go is available
for download, and we will soon enable deployment of Go apps into the App Engine
infrastructure. If you’re interested in starting early, sign
up to be first through the door when we open it up to early testers. If you’d like
to learn more, read it about it on the Go
Blog.
In addition, when we take App Engine out of preview in
the second half of this year, we will provide a
99.95% uptime service level
agreement, operational and developer support, offline billing, and a
new Terms of Service
agreement geared towards businesses. We will also introduce a new pricing structure
for App Engine based on more transparent usage-based pricing.
We’re
announcing these
features and
pricing changes in advance so that our customers have time to review them. Adding
business features will help App Engine meet a broader set of needs and the new, more
transparent pricing model will help customers better align their App Engine investment with
their business goals. Learn more about these changes on the
App
Engine blog.
Finally, we are really excited to graduate from
Preview and we want to let everyone know how much we appreciate the support, commitment, and
feedback we have received. We look forward to working with you for years to come.
Greg D'Alesandre is now the Senior
Product Manager for App Engine after coming back from riding the Google Wave in Sydney. And
he's obsessed with chocolate, no, seriously, obsessed.Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
