Google AppEngine disappoints Twisternow ?

When Google AppEngine launched it was match made in heaven between developer/entrepreneurs + launch of their dream startup/project. It is true up to certain extent no doubt about that. Apart from being a great platform for developers to jump start their idea which took them weeks if not months before, It is not considering apps like Twisternow for rapid scalability in terms of request/user/bandwidth quota. 

As per Techcrunch , AppEngine is designed for 

Absorb spikes in traffic. When a web app surges in popularity, the sudden increase in traffic can be overwhelming for applications of all sizes, from startups to large companies that find themselves rearchitecting their databases and entire systems several times a year. With automatic replication and load balancing, Google App Engine makes it easier to scale from one user to one million by taking advantage of Bigtable and other components of Google’s scalable infrastructure.

Now where is the fun in having your app on AppEngine , if they can not adjust to popular application's growing demand in a true sense. So how did it help Twisternow 
  • They wrote a code (in python), deployed on AppEngine - Great!
  • They get to have their own domain instead of twisternow.appengine.com - Great !
  • People started noticing their app and liked the simple idea of Twisternow - Super great!
  • More and more people come to your site - Super super great!
  • Then what ? - Over quota from AppEngine - Not so great!.
So for Twisternow guys all they got is initial ramp up , but as the message says they are probably moving their boxes somewhere else. It would be good to see if Google AppEngine can have few intelligent rules built in based on applications popularity/page views they toggle the quota, probably have app owners pay some money to scale smoothly without hitting against the quota wall. I'm sure that will be a preferred option for application owners, rather than thinking of 
  • new infrastructure 
  • time associated with the move 
  • The most important - Impact of user mind share shifting somewhere else. As this is a key factor always for new startups, competitors launch every minute.

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May 16, 2008 | Filed Under Business, Communication/Technology, Daily-Life 

Comments

2 Responses to “Google AppEngine disappoints Twisternow ?”

  1. Charles on May 17th, 2008 10:31 am

    Lemme see….

    Some developers sign up for a preview beta release that is not open to the public (there is a long waiting list).

    They somehow learn how to write the app in this environment but do not see the big warning labels about how this preview release has deployment LIMITS. (See http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/quotas.html)

    They deploy the app and complain about how their usage has exceeded the threshold.

    Well…DUH

    PS: I am a developer and would be thrilled if my app got more than 650,000 HTTP requests per day.

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