Wasn't data access very slow up until recently? From the outside I question how important GAE is to Google, has it got a decent sized team behind it and will it

Wasn't data access very slow up until recently? From the outside I question how important GAE is to Google, has it got a decent sized team behind it and will it always be around. With Amazon cloud hosting seems much more of a key business. Of course this is from the outside if I were considering options, I don't use either of them.