Huddle Chat, the power of Google App Engine
To demonstrate the power and usefulness of Google App Engine, Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus developed an excellent application called Huddle Chat, an open source version of Campfire.
Unfortunately, they had to take it down based on allegations that it was a copy of Campfire. The decision came after 37signals, the company behind Ruby on Rails, and some Ruby developers complained. So, why did they complain? Is this another silly fight between Ruby and Python developers? Or is it because Campfire runs on Amazon’s (AMZN) platform, and Google is competing against Amazon to develop the future Operating System for Web applications. Maybe both.
Going back to the Google App Engine, by supporting only Python, Google is limiting the platform to a very small number of programmers. They should seriously consider integrating more popular languages, such as PHP and Ruby. Yes, we all know that Pythonistas don’t like Perl, PHP and Ruby, but hey, this is not about programming languages, this is about Google making money.
