Full disclosure - I have an App (GUI) for App Engine. I fully agree with you. a) Want to force people to sign in to access your app? Slap a `login:required' i

Full disclosure - I have an App (GUI) for App Engine. I fully agree with you. a) Want to force people to sign in to access your app? Slap a `login:required' in app.yaml or use the 'users Api' b) Want to serve different image sizes? Use the 'Images' API to get a url and add a size as a parameter c) Want to search your data (imagine you have a shopping site and you want folks to search your product)? Use the 'Search API' I don't have to tinker with any server. Just write code and deploy it. Another thing I loved about GAE GUI (which is part of the reason I built a replacement GUI when they deprecated theirs) is that it was easy to get 'new' or 'inexperienced' programmers up and running on the web. Click a button and your code gets transferred to Google. Click a button and your code runs locally