Hi, I've been thinking about the decision to move to SO for some more time and I'd like to give a more general feedback.
We are developing apps for the Google ecosystem using the Google dev stack (gwt, gae, galgwt, gdata api, google apps marketplace, chrome webstore etc.) See: http://www.floreysoft.net/download/SS377-1109_floreysoft_v1.pdf Beside our premier account for the apps running on our own domain we also have ~2000 clients running dedicated installations of our tools on app engine, many of them with billing enabled. So most of our generated revenue goes directly to the GAE team ;-) As we are using many tools from Google, not just GAE, my perspective on the decision to move to SO may be slightly different than the GAE team's point of view: In my daily life I already have to use different channels to get support from Google: - For GAE related issues I've to use the Enterprise Support Portal using Salesforce.com - Using ~20 Google groups for the other api's/projects - Issue trackers for the different projects - Mail/Chat with Google Dev Advocates - Blogs/Google+ In general the support is good as most developers are very responsive. My main concern is that the different teams / projects are working quite isolated. Working in smaller teams of course is more efficient and more fun, but when it comes to support I would prefer a single point of contact. It would be perfect to be able to address any issue to the Enterprise Portal (or any other channel) and to trigger some kind of internal dispatch to the proper team. Let me give you an example: We are using the Google Java Stack (Google Plugin/GWT/GAE) to create our apps for multiple locales/browsers, GWT generates dozens of permutations of our app. As GAE only supports 150mb project size, we are hitting this limit - as you have to divide this limit by the number of permutations to get the "real" max app size. It would be possible to e.g. serve gwt fragments from the blobstore, but this would involve all the different teams. I've been totally lost to find the appropriate channel to communicate this issue as every tool itself is working fine, just the combination of them causes the pain. I wonder if there is anybody responsible for taking care of the big picture of the google dev tools. There are some indicators that there may be someone with the big plan (e.g. new api console, streamlined documentation), but there are many overlapping developments and new projects not really linked into each other (e.g. gitkit/appengine user service) that I'm still confused. In general decisions regarding how to provide support should be made on a higher level. If Google decides to use SO as the primary channel for answering questions of developers, at least all projects providing dev tools should use SO. Don't get me wrong: I still believe that the most brilliant minds are working for Google, but as Google rapidly grows, I have the feeling that especially the enterprise support is not yet adequate...and deciding on a per-team basis which channels to establish is the wrong move IMO. Daniel -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/UpPZP2C20agJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
