Comments on: Amazon Web Services vs. Google App Engine: The Race to the One-Click Cloud

By: Akshay Arabolu

Akshay Arabolu — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:05:42 +0000

Hi Adam,

Just came across this comparison of yours between Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. I know its dated but its a great article. Wanted to know if you’d like to update this post and feature it on getcomparisons.com? A project we’ve started to house all the best product comparisons on the web under one roof. You can back-link to this original article of course. Check it out, and if you’re interested, I will send you an invite.

Cheers,
Akshay Arabolu, Founder

By: James

James — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:34:45 +0000

I watched a Youtube video (sorry watched it on my phone so no link) about GAE in which the guy (a Google engineer) stated that, while he couldn’t be specific, internal discussions about pricing suggest that doubling the initial free quota would lead to a monthly fee of about $40. For me, getting from prototype to financially viable just got a whole lot easier!

By: adamfisk

adamfisk — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:27:30 +0000

That’s an excellent point I hadn’t thought of, Marcus. Google at least appears to have the ability to measure CPU “megacycles” and the ability to bill CPU in a much more fine-grained fashion than Amazon. While the pricing hasn’t been announced and they haven’t hinted at anything along those lines as far as I’ve seen, the GAE tracking does appear to do exactly what you’re referring to.

Shrewd observation!

By: Marcus

Marcus — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:46:21 +0000

The way I understand it you only pay for the extra CPU time you actually use at GAE, whereas at Amazon you’ll pay the same if you use 1% of a CPU or 100% during a complete month. This is yet another huge reason for people trying out small ideas to see if the will fly to go for GAE.

By: adamfisk

adamfisk — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:18:28 +0000

I’m not sure what you’re referring to, Dan. Maybe you could elaborate? Particularly with Amazon, you can put anything you want up there. The only thing not supported are massive servers with 256 cores or whatever, like Azul and such. Is that what you’re getting at?

With GAE, it’s running on the same platform as Google’s own apps (more or less). Are you doing something faster?

By: dan

dan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:26:50 +0000

Both options are still too hard and too slow. Doing simple things like counters takes complicated sharding gymnastics. Both systems are scalable but slow.