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

Can Amazon Build the One-Click Cloud?

It’s a great time to program for the cloud, no matter what Ted Dziuba’s entertaining but barely coherent rants have to say (will someone get that guy some experience?). Amazon and Google are going toe-to-toe, with Amazon’s addition of sorting in Simple DB bringing it up to par with Google App Engine’s Datastore API. Sorting was the biggest missing piece in Simple DB and the most compelling reason to choose the Datastore API instead. No longer.  

But Google App Engine (GAE) and the Datastore API still win. Here’s why:

1. The Datastore API is projected to be 10x cheaper. $0.15-$0.18 per GB-month sounds a lot better than Simple DB’s $1.50 per GB-month.
2. GQL. GAE’s SQL subset is just brain dead simple. As adept as programmers are at learning new frameworks, it’s nice to have something brain dead every once in awhile. Simple DB takes a few more cycles to learn (brain cycles that is — more coffee and such. Modafinil perhaps? Anyone tried it? I’m curious).
3. GAE has better Object Relational Mapping (ORM). GAE basically uses Django’s sweet ORM system. You’ve got to jump through a lot more hoops to get something as nice with Simple DB. 
4. GAE automatically scales the web application, not just the database. With Amazon, you have to add load balancing and bring machines up and down yourself, even if you’re using Simple DB. While there are third-party tools to help, they’re not built-in. Again, GAE is brain dead here.  

Sure, App Engine only supports Python. The ultimate question, though, is what functionality can you get in the end? For web apps, App Engine gives you more, particularly for scaling (which is kind of the whole point). Don’t know Python? Learn it. It will save you time in the end. Instead of endlessly fiddling with your load balancer and custom scripts for bringing instances up and down, you’ll spend your time adding the next killer feature your users will love.

In the end, the Amazon/Google “main event” is a huge win for you, me, and our users. The sorting announcement from Amazon comes on the heals of a flurry of other new features from both companies, including Amazon’s impressive persistent storage addition for EC2 called the Elastic Block Store, querying by attributes on Simple DB, GAE’s support for 10 applications per user instead of 3, GAE’s batch writes, etc. Neither one is pulling any punches, and the tools at our disposal as developers are progressing at a breathtaking pace as a result.

Amazon’s is clearly the more complete offering (you can do anything on it, in any language), but it needs to learn from Google’s focus on the dominant deployment scenarios.  Amazon could easily win if it does the following:

1. Makes Simple DB pricing competitive with Google’s projected prices.
2. Adds a query language for Simple DB along the lines of GQL.
3. Adds automatic scaling for web applications, not just the database.
4. Offers complete deployment solutions for the dominant web applications frameworks, from Tomcat/Spring/Hibernate to Django and Zend, with ORM models already adapted to Simple DB, instances automatically replicated with traffic, etc. Basically the same thing as App Engine for more web app frameworks than App Engine supports and adapted to the Amazon platform. Sure, there are third-party solutions for some of this stuff, but those will never be trusted as much as something offered directly from Amazon.

I’m a big fan of Amazon and Werner Vogels (one of the most innovative people in the industry, and also apparently a pretty nice guy), but Amazon desperately needs to learn from what Google has done. It’s ultimately a question of “usability” for developers. The originators of “one-click shopping” are losing in the game they practically invented. 

Amazon needs to turn on the one-click cloud.

Vote for ‘P2P 2.0’ Panel at SXSW 2009!

I submitted “P2P 2.0 and the Future of Digital Media” as a panel for SXSW 2009.  Please, please, please vote for my panel.  It’s going to rock.

The panel will include a group of leaders in the P2P world who are together ushering in a new generation of P2P applications that will turn media distribution on its head, enabling any web site to seamlessly integrate P2P.  These applications enable sites to include high resolution videos, for example, streamed directly through the browser but using P2P CDNs behind the scenes.

Users on these new sites won’t even know they’re using P2P.  They’ll just know they’re seeing some amazing content. 

Web site owners will be able to give their users higher resolution files than ever before while lowering their bandwidth bills.

Vote early, vote often.

TechCrunch 50, LittleShoot, and the Aftermath

Things have been on hold here for the public release of LittleShoot as we have awaited word on our TechCrunch 50 application.  We didn’t make it! Darn.  It came down to the wire — we were in the last batch of companies to receive notification we weren’t in the conference on Friday at 1:24 AM EST. The 50 companies that made it in should know now.  Here’s the e-mail:

 

Dear TechCrunch50 Candidate:

We are sorry to inform you that your company was not selected as a finalist for the TechCrunch50 conference. As you know, we are only able to select a very, very small percentage of the more than 1,000 outstanding applications we receive.

Your company was among a select set of candidates that we considered, and it was a difficult decision driven purely by the limited number of presentation slots. Since we regarded your business so highly, we want to make sure you still get the opportunity to participate in the conference in our DemoPit.
(http://techcrunch50demopit.eventbrite.com).

As a DemoPit company, you will have the opportunity to be nominated for the People’s Choice award and win the 50th spot on the TechCrunch50 main stage. As the 50th company to present, the People’s Choice award winner will be able to compete for the $50,000 TechCrunch50 award. Act fast, as spaces are very limited and first come, first served.

Additionally, all DemoPit companies will benefit from the exposure generated by media attending the event. We do anticipate having approximately 300 members of the international press in attendance.

If you have questions regarding the TechCrunch50 Demo Pit opportunity, please email Dan Kimerling at dan@techcrunch.com.

Sincerely,

–Jason, Heather & Michael
and the TechCrunch50 Team

 

I’ve got a lot of respect for the TechCrunch folks and the way they give unfunded companies a shot, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Jason Calacanis down at the Mahalo Tech Meetup last night in one of my first nights in LA. I appreciate the tremendous work Jason, Michael, Heather, and the other folks at TechCrunch have put it to the process.  

That said, it’s on.  I feel like the guy on draft day who didn’t go on the first round.  It’s the “meritocracy” thing that gets me – TechCrunch 50 is touted as a pure meritocracy.  I’d put LittleShoot’s technology up there with anyone, and it just kills me to think 50 startups beat us out.  We can tell ourselves they had better business models, better marketing plans, yada yada yada, but I’m taking it to mean they had better technology.  If there’s anything that motivates me, that’s it. I have great respect for the other applicants, and we all supported each other on the TechCrunch blog as we agonized through the waiting process.  I wish everyone the best of luck, but the LittleShoot public beta is on its way.

Here’s a link to the LittleShoot demo video we submitted for TechCrunch for people unfamiliar with the Little Fella’:

LittleShoot Demo