Google Rolls Out Cloud Computing Platform

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.

Web 2.0 Conference Raffle Prize Winners

Many thanks to Expo companies Mzinga and BayArea Internet for providing raffle prizes at the Web 2.0 Conference & Expo last Tuesday. The winners of the prizes were as follows:


Kindle Winner, Dan Olsen, with Mzinga Team; iPhone Winner with BayArea Internet Rep

Cloud Computing Services Growing (DaaS)

LongJump has just launched an online database service called Database as a Service (DaaS). DaaS enables you to quickly provision an online database for your web site very much like how you provision your hosting or storage. LongJump hopes to eliminate the hassles of installing MySql on your server, reduce infrastructure management and administration expenses. DaaS is geared to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers who would otherwise have to purchase a database server, provision it, address data access and availability issues, manage backup and replication issues, and tackle security and data protection. Interesting concept but in my opinion MySql is fairly stable and upgrades are fairly easy. LongJump hopes to serve the increasing numbers of small businesses that are web enabling their businesses. Recently, Amazon launched a similar service called, SimpleDB, which has more of a data storage focus. SimpleDB is a database feature that allows web sites to leverage Amazon's computing environment.

Amazon Simple DB launches soon

Amazon Web Services has been providing some really powerful web infrastructure solutions at low cost for some time, and Amazon is about to add a database feature to their current offerings. SimpleDB looks like a robust database feature that will allow companies to leverage Amazon's computing environment to great advantage. From Amazon's SimpleDB page:

Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access.

If you have any questions about this feature you'll want to contact Jeff Barr, Amazon's excellent Web Services evangelist and a fine Web 2.0 Renaissance man as well.

Seven New Web Startups From Amazon's Contest

The Amazon startup contest has video profiles of the seven finalists in their web company contest that helped showcase users of Amazon Web Services (AWS), a very robust technology platform using Amazon's substantial infrastructure.

Jeff Barr, Amazon's great tech evangelist, noted the finalists on Amazon’s blog as well.

These look like some really interesting companies. One is measuring brain networking, another is providing 19 usability testing (this is brilliant for the small website market!) One is optimizing PPC campaigns (hmmm - but won’t Google analytics do that extremely well?)

Amazon's Book 2.0 Revolution

The newest revolution in reading is about to make its debut today. Amazon is slated to release the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device which is expected to vastly improve on traditional e-readers like the Sony Reader. CEO, Jeff Bezos, states that "Books are the last bastion of analog. Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn't."

The paperback-sized handheld device will apparently allow you to wirelessly download e-books directly to the device from Amazon's e-Book Store and receive automatic downloads from major newspapers and publications. It is expected to retail for $399. It will also feature an email service which enables device owners to receive word docs or PDFs that can be stored in the device's library just like a book. It allows you to adjust the font size, store hundreds of books, and search within a book.

"The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a device, it's a service."

It is unclear about DRM implications, or if you can loan a book to someone, or bookmark a page, or opt to listen to an audio version of the book instead. Here is the mini-book cover story from Newsweek on this. Fellow blogger, Joe, also has his take on this.

Updated: Video on Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

Amazon's Kindle - the Future of Reading ... or just a dumb ugly gadget?

Newsweek's cover story is about Amazon's Kindle, a reading device that debuts tomorrow.

The Kindle is Steve Bezos' attempt to revolutionize the art of ... reading. Like many bloggers commenting on the new gadget even before it's been seen in public I'm skeptical this approach will succeed for Amazon. They are trying to charge for stuff we all expect for free. Also, they are offering what appears to be an inferior gadget to a laptop.

Thus laptop folks won't buy this and carry around two gadgets, non-laptop folks will buy a laptop before a Kindle, and folks who don't really like the idea of technology taking over journalism are hardly likely to buy a high gadget instead of more books. This leaves.... nobody to buy them.

Even Newsweek's breathless "Future of Reading" cover story suggests what is probably the single biggest challenge to the Kindle. Author Steven Levy notes that the Kindle is up against some formidable competition:

... superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book.

How to beat Google

Forbes has an interesting article on how companies can beat Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) when it comes to recruiting talent.

By Brian Caulfield

Let's just call the Googleplex what it really is: the ultimate recruiting tool. Employees are shuttled to Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters for free. Once they arrive, they're treated to massages and free gourmet meals. Plus, they're surrounded by thousands of young, type-A employees from the best schools.

Oh, and then there's the ultimate status symbol: Google's soaring stock price.

Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) has been grabbing talent at a ferocious pace. It's on track to double its head count to 20,000 from 10,000 at the end of last year. It employs swarms of contract recruiters to scour top engineering schools for fresh-faced newbies and raid competitors for hoary veterans. Read the glowing press clips and you'd think that Google has an insurmountable edge in the war for tech talent. The stakes can't be much higher: Even if it never capitalizes on the ideas all those brilliant new hires generate, Google locks them away from would-be competitors.

But if you talk to people who have worked inside Google's recruiting operation--or people who have competed against it--they'll tell you that the Silicon Valley's ultimate hiring machine can be beat. The trick: use Google's consensus-driven decision-making process--and exacting standards--against it. "Hiring over there is a protracted battle, to say the least," says one recruiter.

To understand how to beat Google, you first need to know its history. Early on, the company faced a dilemma. While the company's co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are Stanford-educated computer scientists--in other words, they are quite bright--as the smartest companies get bigger, they tend to get dumber. Call it reversion to the mean.

So, Google created a process designed to keep Google chock full of brainiacs. The result: an exacting, consensus-driven process. New hires are vetted extensively to ensure that they are not only smart enough, but that they'd fit in with Google's culture.

That makes speed Google's biggest vulnerability, recruiters say. While a Google hire might have to endure round after round of interviews, a savvy company can pluck off a candidate at the manager level and below by hitting him with an offer--and giving him or her just a few days to respond.

Tough standards are Google's other vulnerability. The company targets graduates of top schools who have top grades: that all but rules out, say, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates or Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, neither of whom have a college degree.

Moreover, candidates on the cusp will get less lucrative offers from Google than candidates from elite schools with the top grades that Google targets. That makes a brilliant student from an out-of-the-way school a soft target.

Another weakness: A single objection will almost always sink a candidate's chances of ever getting hired at Google, those familiar with the company say. That gives a competitor a shot at grabbing a socially awkward but otherwise brilliant young engineer.

The most daunting problem for Google, however, is a math problem. While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt asserts that Google's growth is accelerating as it grows larger, that pace may slow down: Google disappointed Wall Street after admitting it "overspent" on new hires during its latest quarter.

Moreover, recruiters are already pointing to Microsoft and Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) when talking about the future of Google. The two mega-cap tech companies cranked out millionaires in their earlier days, but their share prices have been sedate for years now. Google may only hire geniuses, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Google is just too big to make its newest employees as rich as their peers.

Amazon Payments

Amazon plans to shortly launch an online payment service similar to PayPal and Google Checkout, reports TechCrunch.

The planned service will be an extension of the existing Amazon Payments, which allows third parties selling items on Amazon’s extended network to receive payments from buyers.

Expected to mirror Checkout, the competitive offering will bring buyers to an Amazon-hosted site when they use it to make payments.