Google App Engine to start charging for usage
Have you tried Google App Engine yet? It's a way for you to host web-based applications on Google's infrastructure, and reap the benefits of their uptime and scalability, and their api's.
Applications developed for App Engine currently must be written in Python, but Google promises to add support for other languages as time goes on. PHP, for example, is one scripting language that is extremely common around the internet, but doesn't work on Google's platform yet.
During the "preview release" of App Engine, applications can be hosted there for free -- unfortunately, it comes with a usage cap that will put a halt to any large amount of traffic an application hosted there might receive.
Not to worry though, Tuesday Google will allow developers to host applications there, minus the cap, if they agree to pay for their usage. Here's a breakdown of their cost structure:
- $0.10 per CPU core hour. This covers the actual CPU time an application uses to process a given request, as well as the CPU used for any Datastore usage.
- $0.10 per GB bandwidth incoming, $0.12 per GB bandwidth outgoing. This covers traffic directly to/from users, traffic between the app and any external servers accessed using the URLFetch API, and data sent via the Email API.
- $0.15 per GB of data stored by the application per month.
- $0.0001 per email recipient for emails sent by the application
What do you think of the price structure? Would you ever consider using Google App Engine?