Google AppEngine: More About Google Labs than You?

There’s a long history of tech companies developing there own applications because it’s cheaper long-term than licensing, especially for core applications like: email, calendaring, text processing.

I’m confident Apple employee use Mail.app, iCal, and iWork in-house and those apps are cheap or free for the rest of use. Same for Sun and StarOffice/NeoOffice. Same for Google and Google Docs. One guess on who isn’t getting ongoing licensing fees for those apps? 😉

This is not only why ‘HuddleChat’ was the first AppEngine app but also why it was pulled. HuddleChat made it obvious.

I can easily imagine this conversation at Google:

“Campfire is a great tool, we should pay for it.”

“That sounds like a lot of money for something not built here. It’ll be cheaper long term if we build a clone in-house.”

Take a look at the number of applications in Google’s Lab page. Many of them need; some form of authentication, the general look/feel of Google, integration into Googles infrastructure, to be built at Google, etc.

What a perfect candidate for an abstracted framework like Google AppEngine.

Elsewhere:

“The Google App engine may some day be worth mentioning but as of right now its nothing short of comical. Essentially Geocities 2.0.” – Tom, Tom’s TechBlog

Confirming this theory and that AppEngine is all about future acquisitions (i.e. ‘Want to increase the chances of being acquired by Google – build on AppEngine’).

“Because of the difference in technology, it can take a company anywhere from a year to three or more years to move over to the Google infrastructure and architecture.” – Nik Cubrilovic