Goolg Application Engine

The GAE (Google Application Engine) is Google's solution to scalable web hosting. Unlike the traditional web hosting that provides limited bandwidth and data storage, it is backed by the same infrastructure that hosts lots of Google's web applications.
I've been trying out the GAE for the past two weeks. It's pretty easy to use. I've built a very simple web based market place kind of application, which I may release as open source once I am happy to demo it. All I used is some python code that manages the business logic and data management, and some html and css. There is almost no configuration needed. GAE hosts all the web resources like html, image, css, python code, and all the data. Data can be retrieved using SQL like query (but much simplified, it's more like a object persistence layer). There are some problems, like the lack of a background process. Which has not been a problem for me yet, but already being worked on by the GAE team.
I felt this is a start of many great things to come. Previously you need to find a web hosting solution that provides database and cgi support whenever you want to setup something that interacts with the users on the websites. And you will need a data center to back it if that becomes popular or just happens to be slashdotted or digged. GAE definitely lowered the barrier to entry for the web application market. I can't wait to see all the innovative applications that are going to be built by all the new players who are riding this tide into the market.