Some smart pundits say that Google Compute Engine is somewhat lacking and is clearly no match to Amazon.
Google’s Compute Engine fits in the “Infrastructure as a Service” space by offering cloud infrastructure similar to Amazon Web Services. This first effort is billed as a “limited preview”.
Google’s Compute Engine allows users to spin up virtual machines. Now coupled with Google’s App Engine, Google Apps and Drive the company is building out a very robust cloud stack and says they will provide all the access to its computing power to interested companies.
However there is competition, companies like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, VMware, and HP also have cloud stacks in this space. Google states they are in it to win it with raw performance and sheer computing power.
There are indeed some pluses Google brings to the game like easy integration with Google Docs, allowing users to work offline in Chrome, and ultimately on Chromebooks.
Urs Holzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure at Google, talked up Google’s infrastructure as a service effort. Holzle, also claims that Google App Engine has a million active apps, and heavily pitched the company’s service levels, value and performance.