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Google's App Engine's Java service suffered problems for more than an hour.(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
Nice financial results notwithstanding, Google had some trouble late today with its App Engine service for online applications.
Overall availability of the cloud-computing foundation, which can run online applications written in Python or Java, dropped at least as low as 88.1 percent, according to the Google App Engine status dashboard.
The dashboard showed problems serving Java programs--more than half of attempts to request an app's Web page resources produced errors at one point--and in the delay to use a programming interface to manage tasks.
The problems appeared not to be permanent, though, and Python applications didn't show the same troubles. According to the dashboard, problems began after 9 p.m. PT and were back to normal at about 11 p.m.
App Engine is an intermediate take on the idea of cloud computing, hosting applications written in Java, Python, and later, Google's own Go programming language. These programs can tap into Google services such as online storage.
In comparison, Amazon Web Services provide a lower-level interface to computing nuts and bolts, and some higher-level services such as Google Docs or Spotify provide finished products that consumers can use over the Net.
Moving applications to the Net can cause problems, as shown by a massive, long Amazon Web Services outage in April. But the pitfalls of cloud computing must be balanced against the convenience and power--App Engine, AWS, and other services let customers ramp up operations very quickly and spend money only for resources used--and against the expenses and risks of running in-house network services.
Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the problems.
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