Google App Engine, or “On the democratization of IT infrastructure”
Less than 24 hours after the release of App Engine, we already have the first interesting story: HuddleChat, a sample “App Engine Powered” application written by two Google engineers, has been taken down.
The reason? The application was too similar to Campfire, the popular web chat created by 37Signals. While it’s not difficult to understand Google’s decision (HuddleChat was, first of all, meant to be a sample application, not a full-fledged product), the story is quite interesting.
Now that the IT infrastructure to make a scalable and reliable website is becoming a commodity (also thanks to Amazon Web Services) how easy will it be to clone successful, established website? With open source software, and free or pay-per-use, unlimitedly scalable infrastructures, the costs to startup a new service are virtually not-existent.
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