Google App Engine

Myles Braithwaite gave an informative talk on Google App Engine (GAE) at the PyGTA meeting. GAE is interesting to Python users because until recently, Python was the only language you could use on the service. The service runs your application via the Python Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) standard, so you can develop your site in any of the numerous Python web frame works, although Django 0.9.6 is the official framework.

A major positive is that you get Google's data center infrastructure so you don't need a system administrator to get your application running. . The service is free with a limit on page views and resources used, but the quotas are reasonable for a small site. If your site becomes popular, the service scales well, again because of Google's data center infrastructure.

The first negative is that your application is completely dependant on Google's BigTable database and user authentication, so you must live with the vendor lock in. However, the biggest negative might be Google itself. You have to be completely confident that Google will not be mining your data. Judging from the discussion around this issue, I would say that nobody at the meeting trusts Google that much. I also found it telling there does not seem to be a killer GAE application, so which suggests that other developers feel the same way.