Google has finally opened App Engine to the public and released pricing information. In a case of “following the leader”, Google’s pricing closely follows that of Amazon’s;

Google App Engine

  • Free quota to get started: 500MB storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million pageviews per month
  • $0.10 – $0.12 per CPU core-hour
  • $0.15 – $0.18 per GB-month of storage
  • $0.11 – $0.13 per GB outgoing bandwidth
  • $0.09 – $0.11 per GB incoming bandwidth

Amazon Web Services

  • $0.10 per CPU core-hour
  • $0.15 per GB-month of storage
  • $0.10 – $0.17 per GB outgoing bandwidth
  • $0.10 per GB incoming bandwidth

Garett Rogers over on ZDNet seems surprised. He says that, in relation to the similar pricing to AWS;

This surprises me because Google is the king at making things ridiculously cheap — not comparable.

One can’t help but draw the conclusion that Google is under significant pressure to increase earnings and this move from super cheap pricing to market value pricing is an indication of a slight shift in pricing strategy. Google’s expenditure is legendary, as is it’s meteoric share price rise. Something needs to pay for that Capex and something needs to justify that shareprice – increased revenue is just the thing.

It is however achingly difficult to change strategies from being a low cost provider to being a market prices one – Google has the scale to crush incumbents and hence might just pull the switch off – paid Gogle Apps anyone?

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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