Happy April Fools! The Google Cloud API: cloud coverage anywhere, anytime

We are thrilled to announce a project the App Engine team has been working on for a long time: the Cloud API. The Cloud API allows developers unprecedented control over cloud deployments in their area.

We think the Cloud API is a huge step forward for developers. For the first time, developers can simply and easily gain cloud coverage in locations around the globe within minutes. With the Cloud API developers can drive increased cloud awareness for a wide range of new users and enterprises. This will not only allow totally new applications in the agricultural and metrology sectors to flourish but also provide a welcome addition to mobile, social and gaming. The Cloud API provides the scalability you would expect from App Engine with clouds seeded on demand and dispersed when they are no longer needed. Clouds are created using cloud engines which are specially designed jet engines with three fins. 



A Cloud Deployed Using the Cloud API. Imagery ©2012 GeoEye, DigitalGlobe, Cnes/Spot Image, TerraMetrics



The Cloud API is supported in Python, Java and Go, check out the Getting Started Guide to find out how simple it is to integrate clouds into your applications.





As with other parts of App Engine, the Cloud API is backed by an SLA of 99.95% uptime along with an accuracy of ±5m. Clouds come in configurable sizes ranging up to 5m³ for free customers with paid and premier customers able to extend clouds to 10km³.

Pricing for the Cloud API are based on the likelihood of cloud in the location the cloud is requested. A cloud pricing calculator will be released in the coming days, however example pricing is provided below:

Example Location	Likelihood of Cloud	Price/Cloud Hour/10m3
Seattle, WA, US	55%	Free*
Brisbane, AU	20%	$0.10
Yuma, AZ, US	10%	$0.20

*Removal of cloud from high cloud areas such as Seattle has a cost of $0.10 per Cloud Hour per 10m³.

If you have any questions or comments send them to the App Engine group. We'd love to hear from you.

- Posted by the App Engine team

A New Way to Multitask

On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart rocked the computing world with The Mother of All Demos. One of the many advancements Engelbart discussed was the creation of a simple, intuitive pointing device that would allow you to manipulate a cursor on a screen with the movement of your hand. The world met the mouse.



Before the mouse, the primary way to interact with a computer was to type a command, wait for a response, and type a second command. The ability to coordinate between the movement of a marker on the screen and a flick of the wrist was truly revolutionary, and has transformed the way we interface with our machines today.



However, for decades, the full power of the mouse has been limited. While we’ve been mousing away with one hand, our other hand has often been idle. As information has moved faster and faster, our mousing capacity has stayed the same.



On the Chrome team, we’ve been working to address this problem. Today, we’d like to announce a new way to get twice as much web from your browser. We call it Multitask Mode.







Multitask Mode lets you have access to multiple mice at the same time, so you can make a chess move while you watch a dance move, or draw a horse while you draw on a friend for relationship advice.



Chrome can handle as many mice, touchpads, styli, joysticks, trackballs, and other pointing devices as you can plug into your computer, so you and your friends can browse dozens of sites at the same time.



Try it out and let us know what you think!



Posted by Glen Murphy, Designer and Stylus Stylist

Announcing App Engine Research Awards

One of the most rewarding things about working on App Engine is watching our customers use the platform in new and unexpected ways. We're lucky to have a front row seat to the growth and success of so many innovative new projects, and in that spirit, we are pleased to announce the Google App Engine Research Awards.

This new awards program will support 15 projects by providing App Engine credits in the amount of $60,000 to each project for one year, additional Google services such as Google Cloud Storage will be coming soon as part of the program.

We are committed to supporting scientific and academic research and welcome university faculty from all fields to participate.  Award projects may focus on activities such as social or economic experiments, developing academic aids, analysis of gene sequence data, or using App Engine MapReduce in ways we hadn’t even considered!  If your research has the potential to advance discovery, generates heavy data loads or is in need of an easy-to-use, easy-to-scale platform, we encourage you to submit your proposal.

You can find details on how to apply on our Google Research website. Applications will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. PST, May 11, 2012.



- Posted by the App Engine Team

Crossing the 50 billion km mark & giving Google Maps for Android a fresh look

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)



Every day, millions of people turn to Google Maps for Android for free, voice-guided GPS navigation to guide them to their destination. So far, Navigation on Google Maps for Android has provided 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn directions, the equivalent of 130,000 trips to the moon, 334 trips to the sun, 10 trips to Neptune or 0.005 light years! When getting to your destination matters most, Google Maps for Android will get you there:

A new look for Navigation on Android 4.0+ phones

In today’s release of Google Maps 6.5 for Android we’ve redesigned the Navigation home screen in Android 4.0+ to make it easier to enter a new destination or select from recent and favorite locations by swiping left or right.

Left: New Navigation home screen Right: Navigation in Google Maps for Android



Crisper, faster maps for high pixel density devices

If your device has a high pixel density screen, such as those on Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S II, Droid Razr and others, you’ll now get higher resolution map tiles that take better advantage of the pixels-per-inch on your screen. The result is a crisper, less cluttered map that is easier to read:

Left: Previous style Right:New style in Google Maps 6.5 for Android



Compare our new map on the right to the previous map on the left. The road network is easier to see, less obstructed by labels, and has more color contrast. At more zoomed-in levels, you’ll notice a more controlled amount of maps labels to avoid cluttering the map and blocking out street names. The new style also helps maps react faster to panning, zooming, and twisting.



You'll start seeing the new style as you navigate around new areas on the map; however, you can see these changes immediately by clearing your cache from the Maps settings.



Pick your preferred public transit mode and route option

Google Maps 6.5 for Android now lets you choose to prioritize a particular transit mode (such as the bus or subway) and route option (like taking the recommended route, one with fewer transfers or one with less walking). Whether you just need to get somewhere as fast as possible, or you want to avoid the risk of a missed connection or you prefer not to tire your legs, you can get the transit directions that best suit you. Transit directions and schedules are available for 475 cities around the world.

To start using Google Maps 6.5 for Android, download the update from Google Play. Learn more about how to use other great features of Google Maps for Android on the redesigned Google Maps YouTube channel that has 12 new videos available today.



Posted by Harlan Hile, Software Engineer

Crossing the 50 billion km mark & giving Google Maps for Android a fresh look

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)



Every day, millions of people turn to Google Maps for Android for free, voice-guided GPS navigation to guide them to their destination. So far, Navigation on Google Maps for Android has provided 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn directions, the equivalent of 130,000 trips to the moon, 334 trips to the sun, 10 trips to Neptune or 0.005 light years! When getting to your destination matters most, Google Maps for Android will get you there:

A new look for Navigation on Android 4.0+ phones

In today’s release of Google Maps 6.5 for Android we’ve redesigned the Navigation home screen in Android 4.0+ to make it easier to enter a new destination or select from recent and favorite locations by swiping left or right.

Left: New Navigation home screen Right: Navigation in Google Maps for Android



Crisper, faster maps for high pixel density devices

If your device has a high pixel density screen, such as those on Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S II, Droid Razr and others, you’ll now get higher resolution map tiles that take better advantage of the pixels-per-inch on your screen. The result is a crisper, less cluttered map that is easier to read:

Left: Previous style Right:New style in Google Maps 6.5 for Android



Compare our new map on the right to the previous map on the left. The road network is easier to see, less obstructed by labels, and has more color contrast. At more zoomed-in levels, you’ll notice a more controlled amount of maps labels to avoid cluttering the map and blocking out street names. The new style also helps maps react faster to panning, zooming, and twisting.



You'll start seeing the new style as you navigate around new areas on the map; however, you can see these changes immediately by clearing your cache from the Maps settings.



Pick your preferred public transit mode and route option

Google Maps 6.5 for Android now lets you choose to prioritize a particular transit mode (such as the bus or subway) and route option (like taking the recommended route, one with fewer transfers or one with less walking). Whether you just need to get somewhere as fast as possible, or you want to avoid the risk of a missed connection or you prefer not to tire your legs, you can get the transit directions that best suit you. Transit directions and schedules are available for 475 cities around the world.

To start using Google Maps 6.5 for Android, download the update from Google Play. Learn more about how to use other great features of Google Maps for Android on the redesigned Google Maps YouTube channel that has 12 new videos available today.



Posted by Harlan Hile, Software Engineer

Go Version 1 now on App Engine

Today, with the release of Go 1, a stable version of the Go language, libraries and tools, we're releasing a new Google App Engine SDK for the Go runtime.


Go is a statically typed, compiled language with a dynamic and lightweight feel. With Go you get the efficiency benefits of being close to the machine–your programs compile to native code–with the productivity and quick turnaround of a scripting language. Go apps are easy to write, start fast, and run fast. There has never been a better way to build scalable high-performance cloud applications.

The Go runtime provides clean, idiomatic Go APIs for the popular App Engine services (Blobstore, Datastore, Memcache, and so on) and a straightforward development process. As with the Python and Java SDKs, Go apps can be tested locally with the development server and, most convenient, the development server automatically compiles your Go code, so to test a change all you need to do is to refresh your browser.

The Go 1 SDK also brings improvements and bug fixes. It uses the new Go 1 time API throughout the SDK, provides a MultiError type for error handling in batch operations, and  supports Datastore Cursors and the XMPP and Log services. See the release notes for the details.

Although the Go App Engine runtime is still in experimental status for now, the language stability offered by Go 1 is a major milestone. To learn more about Go 1, see the announcement post at the Go blog and the wealth of documentation at golang.org.




- Posted by the Go and App Engine Teams

App Engine 1.6.4 Released

App Engine’s march of progress continues with another release that’s full of new features, system improvements, and bug fixes. As we spring forward into pre-Google I/O season, we’re keeping our focus on product polish and this release is a shining example.

System Wide Changes

• Logs - Now that the new settings for log storage have been available for one month, logs over the limit you specify will be deleted.

• Datastore Index Stats - The Datastore Statistics page in the Admin Console now displays the storage used by your Datastore Indexes in addition to your Datastore Entities.


• Blobstore Migration - The Datastore Migration tool now includes an experimental option which allows you to migrate your Blobstore objects during the migration process from M/S to HRD. We strongly encourage all applications to migrate to HRD.


• Datastore Backup to Google Cloud Storage - In 1.6.3, we launched backup and restore to Blobstore, and in this release we’ve added the ability to backup your data to Google Cloud Storage.


• Memcache viewer - We’ve introduced the ability to view Memcache statistics and examine memcache entries by key.


• Serve objects from Google Cloud Storage - You can now serve blobs directly from Google Cloud Storage as well as Blobstore.

Runtime Changes

• Threads - Both Java and Python now offer background threads when running on backends as an experimental feature. Additionally, we’ve added the ability to use threads for frontend requests in Java to match Python 2.7.

Datastore Framework Changes

• NDB for Python - The NDB API has graduated from experimental and is now a fully supported feature. This next-generation datastore API improves data modeling and querying and has been built from the ground up to support an asynchronous computing model.


• JPA 2 and JDO 3 for Java - We have made significant improvements to App Engine’s DataNucleus plugin. This experimental release of version 2.0 of the plugin adds support for JPA 2, JDO 3, and contains over 40 bug fixes. Check out the full release notes here.

And that’s not all, you can read about all the new features and bug fixes in our release notes (Python, Java). Send all your feedback to our Google Group, and if you have coding questions, find help from us and other talented developers on Stack Overflow.







- Posted by the App Engine Team