Google App Engine was publicly discussed first but the Microsoft Live Mesh project wasn’t far behind.
Somehow since I’m in Australia and that the weekend it all went live I was offline I can’t seem to get an account with either.
The Google version at least lets you download a local test server and sandbox to play in but for now it is only in Python.
The Microsoft version has more freedom in terms of the programming language you choose to use by seems more restrictive as to who they will let play with the Beta.
Although these two technologies are different on the surface (and inside in many places) they WILL end up competing for the same applications, developers, and users.
Why? Well simply because if you breakdown what each of them really offer the application developer then you’ll see that they are both going to do the same thing just in a slightly different way.
At this point in time I’d say that the Microsoft offering looks more featured and has the desktop support needed to ease users into the true Web 2.0 application world but Google isn’t one to give up easily and they will have to Open Source/Linux community on side from day one… Will this become the browser war of next few years?
What if Apple only pick one to support natively on the iPhone? Who is the bigger threat to them, Google and Android or Microsoft and Windows Mobile?