Google App Engine's lock-in unlocked? (and burn rope)

It's IT Blogwatch: in which folks worry about lock-in at Google's new App Engine. Not to mention a slightly pointless game...

Andy Baio claims an "exclusive":

One of the biggest criticisms of Google's App Engine have been cries of lock-in, that the applications developed for the platform won't be portable to any other service. This morning, Chris Anderson, the Portland-based cofounder of the Grabb.it MP3 blog service, just released AppDrop — an elegant hack proving that's not true. AppDrop is a container for applications developed with the Google App Engine SDK, running entirely on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure. Just like Google's Appspot, anyone can use a modified SDK to deploy their App Engine apps directly to Amazon EC2 instead of Google, and they work without modification. This proof-of-concept was built in only four days and can be deployed in virtually any Linux/Unix hosting environment, showing that moving applications off Google's servers isn't as hard as everyone thought. more

Chris Anderson announces:

With Google’s release of App Engine, we felt the opportunity landscape of the web shift a little under our feet. With the advent of true fire-and-forget dynamic websites, the kinds of projects that will be economical to try has expanded enormously. Truly, just throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. And if it takes a year or two to start making money, no worries. You’ll have created 20 other apps in the meantime. I heard grumblings about lock in on the one hand, and pronouncements of web-Hypercard on the other, and figured that writing an argument pushing back against the lock in question would not be half as effective as doing something. Host your App Engine applications on my new site, AppDrop.com, it’s lotsa fun, and pretty much works. I didn’t build it to scale, or for extra security – but it is open source. more

John Gruber is brief and to the point:

So much for the lock-in argument. more

So Tom wonders if he was wrong:

The information part of an API is a way to get information to and from somewhere. It is a gateway to an information repository such as a database or a membership directory. So while this is an impressive feat by Chris Anderson it doesn't change the fact that the information repository on the other end of Google's API is proprietary and using that repository locks you in. Having a copy of the APIs is great but you are still faced with the fact that your data is stored in a proprietary directory (bigtable), your users are using the Google log-in accounts, and so on. So to make the transfer to another server you are still going to have to recreate all that. Which is exactly what I and every other Google App Engine critic has been saying from the start. more

Stephen Shankland clarifies:

It's hard to say what the union could produce besides ugly children ... [but] this isn't really one cloud computing foundation running inside another. In fact, Anderson just has the single-computer version of Google's App Engine software running on EC2 rather than the real online one. That means software written with Google's App Engine software developer kit can run on EC2 servers, but it can't take advantage of some of the central features of App Engine. For example, it stores data on that particular server and can't employ Google's BigTable data-storage service to tap into Google's large and load-balanced infrastructure. more

David Masover is irritated:

The main irritation I have with EC2 is that it's too low-level, but it does mean it can run just about anything, including App Engines ... However, I think you lose the main benefit of using App Engines if you put them on EC2 -- that being that Google gets to worry about scaling. With EC2, you have to do everything yourself, including detecting load and deciding whether or not to fire up another instance. With App Engines, you just upload your app and watch it go, unless I'm misunderstanding something. Put App Engines on EC2, and you suddenly have to build an infrastructure to support it. So it's nice to know your app is portable, at least, but I don't think anyone's seriously suggesting this, other than as a way to keep Google on their toes -- if Google really does start to be evil, this is a nice way to port away from them. more

Lars Petrus offers this insightful observation:

"Run Google App Engine Apps On Amazon's Cloud" Not only would this sentence have been incomprehensible 10 years ago, but almost every single word in it would have been as well! These aren't boring times, people. more

And finally...

• A slightly pointless game [but worth sticking with it to the end of the song]
  

Buffer overflow:

• Ed Brill: Sam Lawrence: The new Scoble?
• Curt Monash: ScaleDB presents The Revenge of the Pointer
• Roger Kondrat: ParkatmyHouse - Finding available parking near you just became so much easier
• Andy Space: Apple hire hints at strategic acquisitions
• Gizmodo: Latest iPhone Firmware Saves Pictures from Safari
• John Timmer: Google's KML map markup language now an official standard
• Peter Kafka: Amazon Strikes Back At Google App Engine With EC2 Upgrade
• SearchEngineWatch: Yahoo! Slurp 3.0 Replaces Yahoo! Slurp Search Engine Crawler

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Eric Ogren: Personalizing virtual desktops makes sense
• Frank Hayes: Frankly Speaking: Security Team
• Heather Havenstein: Semantic search engine aims to improve health searches
• Preston Gralla: Memo to Microsoft: Annoyance is not a security plan
• Mark Hall: Mobile phones with many personalities
• Douglas Schweitzer: ID thieves may have met your IRS filing deadline for you
• Shark Tank: And have a nice day
• Shark Bait: Contractor Blues

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Send in the (OpenMac) clones (and DIYiMac)
• Gartner: Microsoft Windows, R.I.P. (and a Java house?)
• Google caught plagiarizing? (and 50 of the best)