How Google App Engine Kills Startups, Tricks Consumers

"Take Down Obligations: What Google Can Do To Hosted App Engine Web Sites"

That's seems reasonable to me. If I violate their TOS or in any way act immoral, they have the right to ask me to remove my content from their server. If I refuse to do so, it's completely within their rights to take it down themselves.

"Non-Performance Clause: How Google Puts All Risk and Liability on App Engine “Customers”"

AKA, you're responsible for your data. If something goes wrong and a commit fails, Google isn't responsible, just like if a MySQL query fails, you don't lay the blame on Sun. Again, this sounds pretty reasonable.

"Personal Data Capture Machine: How Google Usurps Private Consumer Information"

In the interest of full disclosure to my customers, I'd be more than willing to say "We use the Google Apps Engine!"

This article seems like one big mess of FUD. Google is providing some cool services at no cost. You don't like it? Go somewhere else.

I am slowly coming to realize that the root of all human misery is jealousy and resentment of those who are more successful than you.

I have certainly felt these emotions in myself before, and I have noticed how ultimately counterproductive they are. Yes it is a lot easier to sit and hate, but if you instead choose to get up and change the world, it is much more rewarding in the end.

Even though App Engine could be seen as competing with at least 2 YC-funded startups (Heroku and Appjet), this article about it is such pure, unadulterated bogusness that I'm inclined to kill it as off-topic. Would anyone mind if I did that? I don't want to be accused of censorship.

The central thesis of this article appears to be that Google should assume all of the risks and all of the uptime obligations an entrepreneur might face in hosting their app, but ask nothing in return, and do it for free.

I'm not sure this would make a good elevator pitch...

More seriously, if Google does this and gets a MSFT-like reputation for demolishing successful members of their developer ecosystem, Amazon provides a for-pay service with higher barriers to entry, but much lower barriers to exit, and a good deal of developer trust already established.

Take your pick, but if I were you, I wouldn't base my decision upon this woman's judgment.

Overblown fear mongering. Given a service such as App Engine, the policies sound reasonable. Google is covering its ass like all service providers do.

If you want total control over your site, then this is obviously not the service for you. You don't need to read the fine print to know that.

While I won't disagree that this article may take the matter too far, there are real issues that need to be considered before choosing to run your BUSINESS on someone else's infrastructure.

If you're just building a toy app to have fun with then this is great but if you're trying to make money, or create the next big thing, you really need to consider if placing all of your IP and uptime requirements on a possible competitor's infrastructure is a good idea.

With Amazon at least you have the option to pick and choose what you want, you can keep your code on your own hardware and offload your data, or vice-versa. Google's offering is all-in-one and, since you aren't given a VM to work with, there is no telling what kind of access they have to your code.

Google isn't SkyNet, but they are looking more and more like Microsoft of the 90s. Would you have wanted to house all your code and data at Redmond?

If someone is worried about Google stealing all his data, he can add a mechanism to his application that will journal all transactions to S3 via Amazon's queuing scheme. Then, two big brothers would have to collude to destroy his website!

Overkill of course, but my point is that these risks are mitigatable.

I would sincerely expect someone who focuses her blog on business development to understand why corporate identity is so important, which is just what Google is trying to protect.

http://fiemster.name/2008/in-response-to-donna-bogatin/

This lady should really spend more time trying to understand how software works, and how people interact with software.

This article misses the most important bit in the Terms of Service:

"By submitting, posting or displaying the Content on or through the Service you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Content for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy."

there has to be rules, and even perhaps a price to pay to get access to one of the best infrastructures in the world..

Previous article linked on News.YC from same author:

http://startupalpha.com/chatter/2008/03/22/y-combinator-goog...

Are two articles enough to make a trend?

What actual evidence, I wonder, is this paranoia based upon?

If this was MS we were talking about, I think there's probably an ample history of malfeasance to justify a lack of trust.

But Google? I don't understand people who go all knee-jerk paranoid about Google. Success automatically breeds deep corruption? They're a big internet success story, so they must be out to get us?