Having dealt with GAE for a while, I can say that EC2 and GAE don't create much competition for each other. Granted that user-facing result is the same - applic

Having dealt with GAE for a while, I can say that EC2 and GAE don't create much competition for each other. Granted that user-facing result is the same - applications, yet both are a completely different model of doing applications. To that extent, I imagine developers choosing their respective platform out of these two will have different mindsets or requirements. In GAE, you have the privilege of bypassing the administrative stuff - creating/deleting/configuring instances, choosing software, amongst other things. Quite useful for some app categories, like web-apps/web-services for verticals, where you want to concentrate on the business logic and the rest doesn't matter as long as the app works. EC2 is great too, and attracts developers who require more freedom in terms of software architecture, and choice of components, but comes with a the non-trivial administrative costs. (I do imagine EC2 consultants being in-demand, sooner or later.) I think both models have potential to succeed, and should be able to nicely co-exist. This free-to-jumpstart approach is perhaps targeted just to stir up AWS demand.