Three things. First, GAE has drastically, massively improved as a product since it was first introduced in 2008(!). But a lot of people don't know that, and the

Three things. First, GAE has drastically, massively improved as a product since it was first introduced in 2008(!). But a lot of people don't know that, and the original reputation remains. Second, App Engine was the original Google Cloud product, it came out years before Compute Engine and never took off like they expected but for awhile it was all they had to offer. Thirdly, in 2011 Google changed the billing model. Datastore requests were no longer free and CPU billing was switched from CPU time to wall time [1]. The old billing model did not account for how some developers were actually using GAE and it was not sustainable, so Google had to make a correction and some apps saw a massive cost increase. This further tarnished the GAE reputation. [1] https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Google-App-Engine-Price-Change-FAQ https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Goog...