As you probably know, Google has just launched App Engine. App Engine is a essentially a hosted application development platform that sits upon Google's vast infrastructure. I could rattle on about this, but I think you should just watch the intro video from Google (at the end of this post).

I think this looks really interesting, and could be a great way to develop web applications in the future. However, as many people have pointed out, the biggest problem here is the lock-in factor. Migrating an existing application to Google App Engine is by no means trivial and the same applies for migrating in the opposite direction.

As SitePoint pointed out, it would be very interesting to see this type of infrastructure deployed on a services such as Amazon's EC2. I should also mention that although Google App Engine only (currently) supports Python it has been made pretty clear that other languages will follow.

I have my Google App Engine account ready to go now, so the next couple of weeks may see me getting my hands dirty with a little Python!

Update: Google has announced, and are taking comments on, upcoming data import/export features for App Engine. This should make the change over to App Engine at least a little more palatable.