Free is good.
Google Searches have always been free. Then, Google upped the ante with free public email, up to the then-unheard of 1 GB. Then, it upped the ante again, offering free version of Google Apps that now allows free hosting of your email server (with your own domain name), up to 6.8 GB of storage per free user account, and free Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs (create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and collaboration in real-time right inside a web browser window), Google Sites (for easily creating and sharing a group website) and Start Page, etc. Recently, IMAP support was added to email hosting and off-line support for Google Docs) was added too. (For $50 /user per year, storage is upped to 25 GB per user, and many other features are added. See details). These goodies were primarily aimed at end-users.
In the last few weeks, Google has been extending its largess to the development community, in a big way.
Free “cloud computing” and a robust toolkit to deploy it is now available for free too. The free Google App Engine™ enables developers to build their web apps on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s own applications. Free quota to get started: 500MB storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million pageviews per month. More information about Google App Engine is available here.
Google Web Toolkit Release Candidate 1.5 was released a few days ago and includes Java 5 language support so that developers can use the full capabilities of the Java 5 syntax. With Google Web Toolkit™, developers can develop and debug web applications in the familiar Java programming language, and then deploy them as highly optimized JavaScript. In doing so, developers sidestep common AJAX headaches like browser compatibility, and enjoy significant performance and productivity gains. Google Health is one recently launched application to use the Google Web Toolkit.
Google also announced the free availability of the Google Earth API and browser plug-in. which allows web developers to quickly and easily turn their web pages into 3D map applications.
Its Key features are:
- Embed Google Earth inside any web page with only a few lines of code.
- Use the JavaScript API to enable rich Earth-based web applications.
- Manipulate KML and the 3D environment: create polygons, lines, placemarks, and more.
- Convert your existing Google Maps API site to 3D with as little as one line of code.
(Philipp Lenssen’s Google Blogoscoped shows a preview of a redesign of Google Maps and improvements to the spreadsheet program).
Google Gears, an open source project that powers the off-line features of Google Reader and Google Docs by providing a local database has been renamed simply Gears, provided additional support for other browsers, and made it available for all all developers. Its key capabilities are:
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Let web applications interact naturally with the desktop |
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Store data locally in a fully-searchable database |
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Run JavaScript in the background to improve performance |
Clearly, Google has decided to spare no expense to win the hearts and minds (and apparently the stomachs) of developers. And it is appears to be succeeding. free is an attractive price, isn’t it?
Filed under: Cloud Computing, Developer Tools, Google Tagged: | AJAX, Cloud Computing, Gears, Google Apps, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google earth, Google Gears, Google Health, Google Reader, Google Sites, Google Talk, Google Web Toolkit, IMAP, Java programming language, javascript
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