All About The Framework

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about Google’s new AppEngine hosting platform, and some companies like Joyent are being pretty bold in their statements of how they too can host Python applications and give developers a greater amount of control. Joyent seems to be forgetting that providing highly-abstracted platforms is what we want to get to, so if they think that having root access is the only answer to the problem then they’re missing the point. AppEngine isn’t about hosting, it’s about Google providing a framework.

Who else does that?

Facebook

The platforms are very similar but there are differences. Developers use a framework provided by a 3rd party. With Facebook the user-base already exist and they opt into your application, and with Google they acquire the information as users start using your site. Google also doesn’t necessarily impose a consistent look and feel around the apps that run on its framework. Facebook makes money placing banner ads on their pages – Google will make money placing AdWords on sites. Facebook makes you host your app yourself, but Google will provide that functionality for you. People also mention not being able to move your application after it’s deployed. It’s ‘stuck’ to the framework (which is closed), but so is Facebooks.

So it’s a question for developers: Do you want to write a non-portable app for Facebook, or a non-portable app for Google?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • How wonderfully subversive. :)
  • how about a non-portable app on google for facebook?
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