Google App Engine

As Techcrunch reported, Google has finally released its long awaited answer to Amazon's web services and entered the hosted web application market. 

For users of Google Apps (like myself), the App Engine allows any business to access Google's massive IT infrastructure. With a few savvy python developers, your days of purchasing hardware and software licenses are (finally) coming to an end. As many people have pointed out, the App Engine only supports python and that will prove a deterrent for some developers at the beginning of this program. Python is the language that powers Google, so it makes sense for Google to start within its own framework. Google insists that support for other development languages, such as ruby, will come shortly.

However, let's take a step back from the technical aspects to understand the business implication of the the Google App Engine. A business can immediately conduct their entire online business within the Google infrastructure for only $50 / year per user. While Google has not released the pricing yet for popular applications (roughly 5 million page views per month), but the pricing is sure to be competitive with Amazon Web Services, which is already has low pricing options.

Additionally, rumors abound about a Salesforce and Google partnership. Little doubt that a combination of Salesforce's application development platform and Google's App Engine could make for an even more powerful combination of cloud computing.