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The service is completely free during the beta period, but there are ceilings on usage. I understand these articles are written in a rush, but this is plain wr

by andreyf 19y ago

The service is completely free during the beta period, but there are ceilings on usage. I understand these articles are written in a rush, but this is plain wrong. From Google's site, it seems pretty clear to me that this will be true out of beta: Every Google App Engine application can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth and CPU for 5 million monthly page views. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this - does this mean the tech cost of a web-based startup is now $0?

olefoo 19y ago
The operational costs of a web startup are approaching the cost of connectivity. But, the people to wire it together will still want money. And as a number of people are gleefully pointing out, Appengine comes with a strategic cost that is not trivial. After playing with the .zip file they provide, I think fears of lockin are overblown. It should be relatively trivial to port existing apps to GAE, and apps developed for GAE should be easy to port to a WSGI enabled server. Google will be a good place to run the free version of your web app that serves as an ad for the premium version that does the same thing with crypto, or with C extensions that add value to the transaction, you'll be able to use the same core code in relatively similar application containers.
- apathy 19y ago
  This is what I was thinking as I played with it last night. I'm definitely going to use it for that. And if I can get away with it, I'm going to try doing some unclever implementations of semi-supervised ML, maybe a few matrix calculations, and see what I can get away with before they kick me off their grid :-) It occurred to me that, since no one is paying me to optimize the usual tight loops that crop up, or write a C extension to speed them up, I can try just running a shit load of them in parallel and storing the results in their ObjectStore. Now I just need to randomize the ''request'' IP blocks and we're all set for the billion or so simulations that my officemate wants to run.
michaelneale 19y ago
It was a long time ago that the "IT" cost of web startups was anything at all worth thinking about. About as relevant as the cost of a water cooler (less so, probably)

by andreyf 19y ago

olefoo 19y ago

The operational costs of a web startup are approaching the cost of connectivity. But, the people to wire it together will still want money. And as a number of people are gleefully pointing out, Appengine comes with a strategic cost that is not trivial. After playing with the .zip file they provide, I think fears of lockin are overblown. It should be relatively trivial to port existing apps to GAE, and apps developed for GAE should be easy to port to a WSGI enabled server. Google will be a good place to run the free version of your web app that serves as an ad for the premium version that does the same thing with crypto, or with C extensions that add value to the transaction, you'll be able to use the same core code in relatively similar application containers.

apathy 19y ago
This is what I was thinking as I played with it last night. I'm definitely going to use it for that. And if I can get away with it, I'm going to try doing some unclever implementations of semi-supervised ML, maybe a few matrix calculations, and see what I can get away with before they kick me off their grid :-) It occurred to me that, since no one is paying me to optimize the usual tight loops that crop up, or write a C extension to speed them up, I can try just running a shit load of them in parallel and storing the results in their ObjectStore. Now I just need to randomize the ''request'' IP blocks and we're all set for the billion or so simulations that my officemate wants to run.

michaelneale 19y ago

It was a long time ago that the "IT" cost of web startups was anything at all worth thinking about. About as relevant as the cost of a water cooler (less so, probably)