Comments on: What does Google App Engine mean for Ajax developers?

By: tomm

tomm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:50:12 +0000

I was JUST telling a co-worker about Jaxer after he turned me on to this post. I agree. Though I am excited that Google is stepping into this arena…though I wish they’d come guns blazing and offer something to compete with EC2. I also think their demo was weak…A heavy handed use of Python for a simple guest book…. written in Textmate? Come on…Don’t tell me we evolved to this advanced state on the web to have such nice things like the Google App Engine only to turn around and use it to make something we had 15 years ago…

By: enzoaeneas

enzoaeneas — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:08:37 +0000

Did you forget Aptana’s Jaxer (http://www.aptana.com/jaxer)?
It allows you to write Javascript for both client and server side and simply decided where to run it. It’s built on top of Gecko.

By: Eric Anderson

Eric Anderson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:45:12 +0000

I’m not sure I would go so far as to say it only has limited use because of security concerns. It all depends on the requirements of the app.

If you are doing some financial data then yes you will want to host it on servers you control. But for most apps (e.g. Content Managements Systems, Tickets support system, CRMs) ultra-tight security and confidentiality is not a requirement. The security provided by services like Amazon, Google and Heroku is probably good enough. Even with possible intrusion by police and other government agents. In fact I would argue their security is higher than many systems people create for themselves.

Also using encryption on your data is always an option.

Just all depends on your needs but I would think for 90% or more of apps the security provided by Google and Amazon are good enough. For the other apps then yes look for other solutions.

By: pmontrasio

pmontrasio — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:37:26 +0000

@pyalot: I understand your point and I agree with the spirit of what you write. Nevertheless there are people that can sue me if their data are not protected as the law of my (their?) country mandates. So I have no problem using Google’s servers to store and process the data of some people (US citizens for sure), but I can’t do the same for the data of people of other nationalities.

@Eric: I’m a RoR developer too and I really like Heroku. It suffers from the same problem as Google App Engine. The only way out I can think of is to let customers explicitly accept that all their data are public. That should give me a shield against being sued.

Finally, I’ll give Google App Engine a try. It’s not wise to ignore such a technology only because it’s (momentarily?) server from the wrong place.

By: Eric Anderson

Eric Anderson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:37:43 +0000

This feels similar to Heroku and I really like where these apps are going. Instead of trying to do a kitchen sink approach and support everything these services are focusing on a niche market. On one hand it reduces their potential customer base by declaring for the customer what language, database and API’s are available. On the other hand there are still plenty of customers and by focusing on one environment they are able to make it really kick ass.

I’m not personally interested in Python but the Heroku does interest me as a Rails developer. Another developer may be more interested in Google App Engine since they might really dig Python. Neither is right or wrong. They are both just trying to capture difference niches in the marketplace.

Given the size of Google they may get greedy and try to capture other niches in the same system. I think this would be a mistake. Even if they got Ruby (or name your favorite system) running under Google App Engine it would always be a second-class citizen that is forced to do things the Python way (or Google’s version of the Python way) instead of the Rails way, or PHP way or Perl way (or whatever your favorite system is).

By: pyalot

pyalot — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:22:04 +0000

@pmontrasio, while you do have a point with privacy and security, I’d like to point out that: in the 21st century there’s no such thing as privacy and security on the network. You’d maybe like to contemplate your attitude towards information, when your livelyhood depends on secrecy and is connected to an internetworked network. I find that not having proprietary information is easier then worrying about privacy and security.

By: pmontrasio

pmontrasio — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:02:17 +0000

These announcements are extremely interesting but as a non US-citizens working outside the US for non-US companies I’m very reluctant in storing sensitive data on US-based servers. I’m not alone, see http://www.scribd.com/doc/3697/Privacy-and-the-USA-Patriot-Act and http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080324.wrgoogle24/BNStory/Technology/home
I quote three sentences from the latter document

Some other organizations are banning Google’s innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data. [...] “If I were a business manager, I would want to be very careful about what kind of data I made accessible to U.S. law enforcement.” [...] Montreal security strategist Jeffrey Posluns says Google’s software suite may suit some small businesses because cost savings are significant. But he warns that the deciding factor should be the sensitivity of the organization’s information.

So, I find these services very interesting, but I probably won’t be allowed to use them for most real world applications. How about a Google or Amazon server farm outside the US jurisdiction?