The Google App Engine doesn’t really advance the cause of evil all that much, but it’s not exactly good, either. Google makes a big deal about its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil”, but at the end of the day, Google really is just another corporation, no matter how well-intentioned its founders may have been. Regardless of whether the corporation holding the carrot is called “Microsoft” or “Google”, developers should think long and hard before following the primrose path towards lock-in to non-standard designs.

After the comments on my last post, I decided that perhaps I should investigate the world of free web apps a bit further, and give some real thought to the licensing implications of software that is, in many peoples’ view, not actually distributed.