Google App Engine, a better way to further segment the Internet.

In the old days there were large, evil Corporate Software Companies  who would try and run the world and guide consumers computing experience in a way that made them and their programmers truckloads of money.  Then all of a sudden everyone coming out of Uni was a programmer, and we began seeing more and more Software Companies, and new software delivery systems.  Then came a search company who found better ways of getting truckloads of money, and who started to write the book on the whole Internet thing.  They changed attitudes and made large semi-truckloads of money out of all the evil corporate Software Companies.

Not being content with just making the semi-truckloads of money, and being the biggest, and having a cool campus, they are going to hand over to the world the tools to further segment the Internet and the computing world.  And in turn cement their place as "The Almost Evil Empire".

Google have just fired up the Google App Engine, which will start with application servers, database access, and data storage services.  So it's a one-stop shop for the online application developer.  As with most of the Google line-up, it is Beta, so there is likely to be additional languages, other than Python, and servers to come.  The theory is that developers will have a level development platform provided by Google so that they don't need to worry about it.  Leaving more time to make that next social network a whole lot better.

There are a couple of these projects around and all I can do is worry about how this is going to give us lots of Facebook Apps and Twitter clones, and I'm going to be wasting 30% of my time trying them all out, and getting annoyed that "if they would just get together and provide one product with all these features".

I find myself beginning to wonder if building all these software creation tools (Adobe Air, etc) is just going to break up the the already fragmented software industry.  This is a little scary, because for a long time the Evil Corporate Software Companies created and set the standards that we, as the user, could follow.  We are only just beginning to the see the impact of format wars in the Office Suite space.  What is going to happen when there is Office Suite for Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter, and they all have their own format?  Sys-admins will be working around the clock to find compatibility tools just so that that report that started Google Spreadsheet, can be viewed in Numbers  and Excel.

In an effort to avoid all of this, I have shifted to Google Docs  as my main word processor, but have OpenOffice and Microsoft Office to back me up with files from work, family and friends.  I have never been a fan of cloud computing, but in a few ways I guess the idea does make sense, and for what I'm doing, it is working really well.  Maybe this is Google's plan, flood the space with lots of half right options and then everyone will fall back to Google because they have the most mature beta in the space.
  

Jason