My last post got picked up by Reddit and YCombinator each of which have their own comments section. I wanted to address a few of those comments below. Please note, there were several great comments that I don't address below but I thought these few covered the overall issues.
From ashu of Ycombinator...
People just love misinterpreting products, comparing them to completely unrelated things and just making noise. That's right. Making noise is the goal. All else is secondary.
Can't people just say "Hey look, here's a new product which IS USEFUL to somebody out there on earth and a damn nifty one at that." That somebody in Google App Engine's case is a hacker who wants to quickly try out his hobbies without worrying about all the mess that comes with managing a web host.
But no. We must compare. And we must make noise. Lots of it.
Perhaps it gives us a way to figure out which blogs / sites to NEVER visit.
I'll try to be easy on him since he'll probably never see this (if his comments are to be believed). That said, his comments are foolish. The point of my post was that while Google App Engine IS USEFULL there are shared hosts that do the same thing and are MORE USEFULL. The fact that they are essentially the same and should be compared as such was part of my point.
In response to ashu's post, randomhack of Ycombinator said...
Perhaps. But OTOH the author is pissed off about the amount of noise being generated in favor of Google App Engine as if it were completely revolutionary when, according to the author, currently its only a nicely packaged free webhost with many drawbacks. The operative word here is of course "currently".
Honestly, that's exactly right. My original post was a response to all the positive posts out there and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I was "pissed off" I definitely think people need to view it in the context of all the positive reviews I was responding to.
Moving on, from Toffer of Ycombinator...
My favorite quote from the linked article:
"Google App Engine's ability to scale depends on how much server resources Google is willing to dedicate to the task of running these applications. Google is not going to risk slowing down their primary services for a Google App Engine application. So their ability to scale could very well be less than other companies, we just don't know."
No doubt a $6/mo. account at Dreamhost will scale better than Google.
This was a common mistake in that people who dislike shared hosting took my last article as an endorsement of shared hosting for use on applications. It wasn't. The truth is, anyone serious shouldn't use Google App Engine or a Shared Host. Both are better suited for hobbyists wanting to "try something" or developers looking for a place to prototype their solution.
(or blogs for that matter, but I digress...)
My point wasn't to say Shared Hosts were sufficient it was to say Shared Hosts aren't sufficient and Google App Engine doesn't even measure up to them. Again this goes to the point above which is that my post was a reaction to people claiming Google App Engine was ideal for startups.
Zeco from Reddit says...
Tom says:
Those pesky privacy concerns
Another thing that doesn't seem to come up is that Google has made no guarantees as to the privacy of the content being put on their servers. They'll have access to your complete source code and the rights to do whatever they want with it. I doubt they would do anything but the fact that they could is enough to chase any smart start up away.
Google App Engine Terms of Service, §8.1 says:
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content or Application. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in the Content and/or Application, and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
Also, what web host did he find that offers 15TB / month for $6? (no, he didn't mean 15.0 GB, as he stated that Google's 300 GB were inferior)
He sounds a little desperate. What might his stakes be in this?
Two things here. First, from the same Google document he quoted...
Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from the Service.
So Google can do whatever it wants with the content put on Google App Engine.
On his second point, I find it odd that people automatically assume that anyone who disagrees with them has an ulterior motive. To me, that shows limited thinking on the part of the other person. "Since I am always right anyone who disagrees must be dishonest"
The funny thing is, had Zeco thought about it for just a second, he might have realized I went out of my way NOT to mention any web host by name. Why would someone who works for a specific web host not mention the name of that web host in their post? Does advocating web hosts in general really do one particular one any good at all?
From pbx of Reddit...
Translation of the "Yes" marks next to Python, Ruby, and Perl in the comparison chart: "Yes, Average Webhost will let you run these as CGI, though I have no idea what you'd do if you wanted to host a real application written in any of them. Yeah, that would probably suck. Why don't you just use PHP?"
This is probably the fairest criticism of all the ones I saw out there. I think individual web hosts vary and I think its important to investigate the one you are going with to make sure they do a good job of supporting the environment you wish to work in. There will always be horror stories and I've personally found shared web hosts to be a very mixed bag but when you find a good one they are usually willing to bend over backwards to make sure you are taken care of (which I suspect is more than Google will be doing for App Engine developers)