

Google Launches Cloud Playground, A Browser Environment For Trying Its Cloud - msaint
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/24/google-launches-cloud-playground-a-browser-based-environment-for-trying-its-cloud-platform/

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SeanDav
As I see it, there are two elephants in the room that need addressing.

\- Do you really want to get involved with anything Google given their links
to NSA?

\- Do you really want to place company or personal resources into this product
given their track history of shutting down experimental, and not even
experimental technologies (as this is)?

(or Maybe it is time to take off my tin-foil hat. I don't know about that, I
just know I am deeply disappointed with Google)

~~~
tnuc
> Do you really want to get involved with anything Google given their links to
> NSA?

Google is far from alone with the NSA involvement. To be safe you would have
to host in a country outside the USA.

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amiramir
NSA issues aside, it would be nice to get some of the community's thoughts on
the merits of the service from a technical and product point of view.

~~~
gyepi
I think the App Engine is perfect for developers who don't want to have to
make decisions about servers and infrastructure. This can be beneficial.
However, your design _must_ fit their infrastructure. Depending on your
application, this may or may not be a good thing.

If you ever need/want/have to migrate your application elsewhere, you'd have
to replicate their environment or rewrite the application.

For the kinds of applications I work on, those are deal breakers so I use AWS
(which also has its limitations) or some other server hosting service instead.

~~~
jedc
That's not the case for Java apps on App Engine anymore. According to
[http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/google-
app...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/google-app-engine-
running-in-private-cloud-with-capedrawf.html) and
[http://www.jboss.org/capedwarf](http://www.jboss.org/capedwarf)

I run a number of apps on Python/App Engine specifically because I don't want
to deal with servers/infrastructure/scaling. Sometimes the limitations aren't
ideal, but it's still a trade-off I've been happy with overall.

~~~
gyepi
Right, this proves my point. You can run Java apps on JBoss. That's it. You
are still limited to using their infrastructure. Don't get me wrong, that's
not necessarily a bad thing. For many, it's wonderful. I'm just saying that
one needs to weigh needs, capabilities and goals carefully before deciding to
use Google Apps (or any other "platform") because _your_ application _has_ to
work in _their platform_ and moving to another platform could be very costly.

It seems obvious to say, but many technical decisions involve trade offs of
one kind or the other. The ones that bind early and have high switching costs
are worth thinking through at some depth.

------
kryten
After the last couple of weeks, no.

Everyone I know is bailing out on "the cloud". Even non-technical people.

This is like slapping a child round the face and offering them an ice cream
straight away afterwards.

