Google gave the cloud computing initiative a major boost today by launching Google App Engine. Web developers can build and run their web applications on the Google infrastructure. The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it’s receiving significant traffic and has millions of users.

The service is similar to Amazon Simple DB and SalesForce App Exchange where developers can online demand applications or SaaS applications. Google App Engine gives developers access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data.

The development environment includes the following features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving developers more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.