Can Google App Engine solve Java hosting?

Today's post was inspired by Rick Ross's article Will Google App Engine Support Java? Can it?. But let's start at the beginning. Have you heard of the new service Google App Engine? The idea is simple. Imagine taking your application and deploying it on Google's infrastructure. The service offers:

dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies
persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions
automatic scaling and load balancing
APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts
a fully featured local development environment that simulates Google App Engine on your computer

There's one small catch: it only supports applications written in Python for now. Still, “Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google App Engine, we look forward to supporting more languages in the future.”

Back to Rick Ross's article. He sees at least three problems with getting Google App Engine to support Java. Of course, there are a few more problems, which is why Java hosting is such a pain. The question is whether Google can solve them.

Personally, I think it can. Google has shown a fondness for Java in the past, and it's no secret that it uses Java. So there's some sympathy there. The problem with hosting Java is that it would take substantial changes to the JVM. Google has already shown everyone it can bend the technology to its needs. See The Android case.

What would Google gain by supporting Java over, say, .NET or PHP? Does anything favor Java at all? This is pure speculation now, but from a practical point of view, .NET wouldn't be much of a win for Google. It would be about as complex as Java. Add the fact that .NET only runs reliably on Windows, and that's enough to keep Google from even considering support.

PHP is much less complex and also fits better with a service designed to provide infrastructure for web applications. The case for Java, or more precisely the JVM here, might be that supporting it would mean supporting other languages such as Groovy and Ruby as well. If nothing else, Google App Engine might spur Sun to do more about Java hosting. But I admit that's probably wishful thinking…

Can Google App Engine solve Java hosting?

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