Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Google App Engine is final leg of the strategy to disrupt social networks

With the announcement of Google App Engine and the resulting symphony (or cacophony) of conversation a lot has been said about cloud computing and Amazon's Web Services. For all the conversation not much has looked at the Facebook angel in detail.

Google App Engine strikes me less as a competitor to Amazon Web Services and more as the finial piece in the puzzle for creating a web-spanning social network. Google App Engine provides a place for applications to be built and hosted external to any social network. Coupled with Google's APIs for a users social network (the contact API), an identity mechanism (Google Accounts) and the OpenSocial APIs, everything that can be done in Facebook or any other social network can now be done by any application without having to be internal to any social network.

It is an innovative way of dealing with the issues of social networks by explicitly turning the web into a giant social network without walls.

Of course this will mean the very act of surfing could see you have a sheep tossed at you!

Tags: Google, Facebook, Google App Engine, Amazon,Amazon Web Services, Social Network, OpenSocial