Google App Engine Archive

Google has just started informing developers who use Google App Engine that the service will be leaving preview mode in late September. I’ve included parts of the email received by developer Darren Stuart below. From viewing the new pricing link, it appears that the cloud services offered by Google will now be known as, “Google Cloud Services”.

The biggest change comes to the pricing model in which Google notes, “…this includes lowering the free quotas for all Apps. Almost all applications will be billed more under the new pricing. Once App Engine leaves preview this pricing will immediately go into effect..” Pricing will fall into three tiers: free, paid and premium. The paid plan will be $9/app and the premium plan will be $500/account. It is important that if you use Google Cloud Services/App Engine that you review the pricing because Google notes that the pricing will go into effect immediately once the preview mode is turned off in September.

Some important bits from the email:

• “In May at Google I/O we announced that Google App Engine would be leaving Preview status later this year. As part of Google’s long-term commitment to App Engine, we are also updating our policies, pricing and support model to reflect its status as a fully supported Google product. We plan to roll this out in the second half of September but we wanted to let you know what this will mean for you and your App Engine applications.”
• “App Engine has a 3 year deprecation policy. This policy applies to the entire App Engine platform with the exception of “trusted tester” and “experimental” APIs.”
• “We are introducing new Premier Accounts that will have access to Operational Support, invoice-based billing, and allow companies to create as many applications as they need for $500 per account per month (plus usage fees).”

Google has created an optimization faq to help you streamline your apps to keep the costs down. There is also a billing faq to help understand the new pricing model. Google is also offering a $50 credit if you modify your budget or setup billing on your Google Cloud Services/App Engine account.

The Google I/O conference starts in under an hour — you can watch the conference online on YouTube. Our men on the street, Sorgey and Brem have just sent in 10 of the announcements that will be made during the Google I/O conference. If you aren’t a fan of spoilers, you might want to look away now.

1. Android phones will no longer allow multitasking – we are hearing that Google realized how big the iPhone is and figures if they do it, we should too.
2. All Android apps must be in Flash going forward – developers of current apps will have 10 days to update their apps to the latest Flash standard or risk deactivation of their mobile devices.
3. Beginning with Android software version 2.2, all apps must be open-sourced. No apps that aren’t available as open source will be accepted.
4. Google search spiders will now look for the presence of the Facebook Like button – if they find it on your site or blog (apparently one page counts for the full site) – you will be dinged 1 pagerank level.
5. Google Maps will add a “me” icon. If you have an Android phone, your friends will be able to watch you move around the map. If you enter a zone of no coverage, the map will “snap to” your location once you get into an available access location. Who needs checkins when we have a map with faces moving around in real-time?
6. Google Buzz will be merged with Yahoo Buzz and AT&T Buzz to form Optimus Buzz – no idea what the feature set will look like at this point
7. Google Finance will be enhanced to predict the next time one of these huge stock drops will be coming so we can all get P&G and Accenture shares for a penny each.
8. Google will remove Twitter entries from their “real-time” search
9. All developers will receive a free Nexus One once the store closes- but the developers will need to figure out unique complex math equations to get to the form to receive the free Nexus One
10. You can use your Google account to sync with the new Windows Phone and Windows Mobile 7.

If you hear of any other announcements coming out of the conference, please leave them in the comments. You can use an alternate “handle” to protect your identity.

During the SXSW conference in Austin this week, Google held an all day hackathon event. The idea behind the hackathon is to allow developers to create applications in one day and also get help from Google employees on applications they are developing.

I recorded the session that discussed Google App Engine and the video is below. You can also download all of the “code labs” which are simple tutorials on how to use a variety of Google APIs and services including Google App Engine.
Continue reading “SXSW: Google App Engine Demo” »

Staffing solutions provider Jobscience has announced the launch of Jobscience for Google Apps today. The new service combines Google Apps and a custom recruiting application built on the Salesforce Force.com platform. What a change from the old days of trying to integrate Resumix with a job web site.

Interestingly they push you to use Blogger for the company job blog. They quickly note that the job blog offers RSS so you can share the jobs anywhere. The company describes the service as, “…allows small to medium size companies to publicly broadcast jobs, accept online applications, and utilize Google Docs to manage resumes and other recruitment-related documents.”

A site license is $100/month and works with any level of Salesforce account. The company created a demo video which is a walkthrough of the steps to get the application running.

Zoho has announced that they now support app deployment to Google AppEngine today. Basically what this means is that if you create an application in Zoho Creator, you can now quickly deploy it to Google AppEngine which will allow for more discovery and potentially up the take rate for the app.

Zoho notes that it takes only three steps to get an app onto Google AppEngine. First the application must be created in Zoho Creator. Next the developer must create a "placeholder" in Google AppEngine. Last, the developer deploys the application from Zoho Creator to Google AppEngine. The big benefit is that Zoho Creator takes care of writing the Python code for Google. Currently Google only supports the Python language on AppEngine.

Zoho self-reports 130,000 applications have been built using Zoho Creator. Back in September, Zoho launched an app marketplace and I assume today’s AppEngine announcement is an extension of Zoho’s desire to get apps discovered.

Here’s an overview from Zoho on how the Google AppEngine deployment works:

Google is coming to NYC with their App Engine! The Google App Engine Hack-a-thon will be held on May 7th at the Googleplex — if you want to attend, register straight away. You can choose to code your own app with the help of the Google team or watch a live demonstration of how to build an app using Python on the Google App Engine framework.

Google wil provide food and power as well. Should be an exciting day and I will be there to (hopefully) build the first CN App Engine app (with some help from the congregation).

If you are a developer or engineer who has considered working for Google, this might be a great opportunity to speak to some of the lead players at Google and begin to build a relationship.