I am the co-founder of a startup and intend to build a leading mobile application. I am the lead developer and architect of the application and I intend to use Google App Engine (GAE).
I have never used GAE for commercial applications and have little commercial experience using Python( I am a java specialist developer).
After days of research I found out these articles, ReadWriteWeb and Goodby GAE criticizing GAE. The articles were written in 2010 and 2011 respectively and nearly all issues mentioned in the articles have been resolved with 2013 version of GAE.
So the reasons for using GAE are as below:
- Scalabilty
Our company is a startup and we are concerned more about the application than the infrastructure. Initially we thought to go with Amazon EC services, but Amazon EC has an IAAS model and we dont have dedicated sysadmins to manage and control the infrastructure. We also do not have in-house expertise to do scalability if the company was to use Amazon EC services. GAE is pretty neat and scales nicely on Google’s infrastructure. - Google products
The company is using other Google product to perform business services, such applications are Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Webmaster, Google Analytics and Google hangout. - Ease of use
Our team are comfortable with Google’s technology thus this is a team preference. - Reasonable price
- Leading technology stack
Well, GAE is something new and not every startup are planning to use it. In fact, most of them are leaning towards a proven solution with AWS.
But our team is willing to take GAE and use it, and in the near future we plan to provide GAE product development services to other companies. - Big data
We can leverage Google’s Big Data offerings in the near future and add analytical features to our product.
The reason i intend to use GAE is mainly so that the company doesnot have to worry about scalability and also the startup is already using gmail, drive, g+, and other google goodies to do business.
Let us see how things unfold with Google App Engine.