Google App Engine

When it comes to running applications on Google Cloud, developers have a lot of options. There are four primary compute services—Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, App Engine, and Cloud Functions. Each of these services aims to address different classes of problems, and each can be used in a variety of ways to accomplish a wide range of tasks.

In the following chapters, we will take a deep dive into each of these compute options. We'll cover key differences between these options, strengths and limitations, and when to use each one. After reading this book, you'll walk away with the tools and knowledge needed to effectively build and manage solutions on top of Google's various compute services. We'll begin our tour of compute options with the App Engine, Google's managed PaaS offering. App Engine is one of the oldest Google Cloud services, and has a positive track record for helping developers build fast, reliable services that scale extremely well.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• The different Google Cloud compute services
• The driving philosophies behind App Engine
• Identifying situations where the App Engine is a good fit
• Developing and deploying services in the App Engine standard environment
• Using virtually any language with custom runtimes
• Deploying and managing services running in the cloud