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Google has officially launched their Google App Engine for full-stack, automatically scalable, hosted web application platform as of 9pm PST last night. The architecture offered consists of Python application servers, BigTable database access, and GFS distributed data file servers.

Obviously, this service is intended to go toe-to-toe with the Amazon suite of web services; more specifically S3 for data storage, EC2 for virtual servers, and their SimpleDB for database access.

Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington were at the event last night. Scoble posted several videos from the event. Arrington, as always, expatiates on the functionality, usage and monitoring of the service. Google also posted their official video from their announcement as well as a demonstration video.

From Google:

Run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure.
Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.

• No assembly required.
  Google App Engine provides a fully-integrated application environment.
• It’s easy to scale.
  Google App Engine makes it easy to build scalable applications that grow from one user to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.
• It’s free to get started.
  Every Google App Engine application can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth and CPU for 5 million monthly page views.

The real question for me is whether this will truly be for business and enterprise level applications or for the small, supplemental apps developed on a tight deadline.

Image from Wikipedia

The faithful readers of dotShout! have helped illuminate what’s hot for Sunday April 6, 2008. Star Wars memorabilia leads the site followed closely by rumors on the value of Federated Media, parent of several of our favorite blogs (Boing Boing, Ars Technica). Here are a few of the other influential articles from the day:

1. Star Wars Lithograph, Etched Badge, and…
   
2. Federated Media May Be Worth $200 Million
   
3. New Photos: Get Smart
   
4. Big Brother 9: Live feeds report - April 5
   
5. iriver E100 hands-on
   
6. Touchscreen Satellite Phone Is as Beautiful as…
   
7. Asus R50 to Be Reincarnated With Keyboard Later…
   
8. FileQube.com - Free File Storage, Sharing Service
   
9. Wildscreen.TV - New Generation Quality Broadcast
   
10. bandFIND.com - A Music Industry Network

Today on good old dotShout!, readers were fascinated by the new photos from the set of Frank Miller’s big screen adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit that leaked online. After that rumors dominated the board. Here are a few of the more influential articles from the day:

1. Set Photos: Will Eisner’s The Spirit
2. Industry Moves: Neil Budde Joins Personalized…
3. AOC intros format-lovin’ X600 portable media…
4. Federated Media’s rumored $200 million…
5. Tipster: Mahalo revenues are around $9,000…

NY Times Bits blogger Saul Hansen takes a look at Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Rafat Ali of Paid Content and their unique approaches to blogging. This debate is more than simply an argument over emotional versus analytical blogging or their specific journalistic style, it sets the framework for how the two see the future.

“The only way to compete with CNet in the long run is to group these writers together. They should be better writers than CNet has because they are all competitive entrepreneurs with a lot of equity at stake.”
- Mike Arrington

Ali offers a slightly different take…

“The big market for us is the trade media. Companies like Reed Elsevier, Nielsen, Incisive and Informa play in this market, not these blogs. If CNet is the only target you can aspire to be, that is selling yourself really short.”

Read the full blog post here.