Google Launches App Engine

Google announced this week that it would launch a beta test of its Google App Engine, a tool that allows developers use of Google's infrastructure for building new web applications. The beta test is open to the first 10,000 developers to sign up for it, with limitations on storage and bandwidth.

"Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data," Paul McDonald, Google's product manager, said in a Tuesday blog post.

Also from McDonald's post:

"The development environment includes the following features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment"