The pay-as-you-go won't be enabled until sometime around the end of the year.
The quoted CPU pricing "$0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour" is similar to Amazon EC2 small instance pricing ($0.10/hr), but it's probably not a straight comparison. AppEngine seems to charge by the sip, as might be expected from a compute utility, while web apps will probably require a minimum of 24x7 usage of an EC2 instance. So AppEngine should be less costly on the low-end.
Here's an interview with some AppEngine managers on the announcements tomorrow:
My understanding is that EC2 charges for wall clock time. I heard a rumor that Google was going to charge only for the actual CPU time used. In other words, if your service is totally idle, Google will be free but EC2 will cost you $84 a month per server.
yawn.... ok. I can't think of serious startups using their services. Maybe if I am doing something quick, a small app, while having a full time job. etc...
At least with amazon, you have controll of the servers, and can install whatever you want. With Goggle App Engine your are tied to it to the hip.
And Google has been getting eviler lately. For some reason I wouldn't trust my source code with them, while I would trust amazon a little bit more.
Amazon really wants your business. They want to make a fortune in the compute supply business. This seems like another Google offering that they don't take particularly seriously - that they can offer for free at some level of service because of the enormous river of advertising cash - but you know its not much of blip on their business radar. Mostly these services aid recruitment and keep up Google's profile but I don't expect them to be actively chasing down customers and getting better at what they do like Amazon does.
There is only one business sector in which I'd be scared to compete with Google and that's search.
This seems like another Google offering that they don't take particularly seriously
I don't think so, Google's hosting is going to bite into MS's market of IIS and Windows Servers just like GMail/Calendar is competing with Outlook/Exchange.
Microsoft is countering with hosted Exchange service and hosted SQL Server services. I think hosted Exchange will be a lot more profitable than (ad-free) GMail hosting can ever be.
Is it more about trust or quality and pricing? You might not trust google - but they already have access to enough information / data that it's relatively moot... to me it comes down to speed, quality and utility. ultimately, my trust level is equal on this front.
To me it doesn't seem like a bad place to start, at all, once a migration path away from it is in place. You can get started pretty much for free, and if things take off, worry about moving it someplace better.
OTOH, I've pretty much gone with Ruby at this point, and since that's not an option, I'll just keep my own server. I do like the control I have, even if it's expensive.
The big announcement will be around Google App Engine - expect the 160,000 or so developers on the waiting list to be let in tomorrow (75,000 have been given access already).
The quoted CPU pricing "$0.10 - $0.12 per CPU core-hour" is similar to Amazon EC2 small instance pricing ($0.10/hr), but it's probably not a straight comparison. AppEngine seems to charge by the sip, as might be expected from a compute utility, while web apps will probably require a minimum of 24x7 usage of an EC2 instance. So AppEngine should be less costly on the low-end.
Here's an interview with some AppEngine managers on the announcements tomorrow:
http://readwritetalk.com/2008/05/27/pete-koomen-paul-mcdonal...