Just came across this comparison of yours between Amazon EC2 vs Google App Engine. Great article. Wanted to know if you’d like to feature it on getcomparisons.com? A project we’ve started to house all the best product comparisons on the web under one roof. You can back-link to this original article of course. Check it out, and if you’re interested, I will send you an invite.

Cheers,
Akshay Arabolu, Founder

I suspect that for many users, the ability to just drop in an app without having to spend weeks messing around with JVM-limited language ports[...]

One of App Engine’s major advantage is that you don’t have to spend weeks messing around with server configuration, replication, failover, backups, monitoring, and so forth – it’s much more drop-in than a bare server offering can be.

I think, though, that most of the advantages of the new micro instances will be complementary to App Engine, not in competition. Two things spring immediately to mind:
1. Micro instances provide a perfect hosting platform for TyphoonAE, an independent implementation of the App Engine platform. Users wanting to move low traffic apps off App Engine can set up a micro instance running TyphoonAE, and avoid having to modify their code.
2. Micro instances also provide a perfect platform for doing ‘offline work’ for App Engine apps at relatively low volumes. Suppose, for example, that your app generally fits well on App Engine, but you have a few things, such as image recognition or processing, or video transcoding, that require facilities not available on App Engine. A micro instance may be exactly what you need in the way of minimal, low-cost server resources to perform this batch work.