Google plays its IaaS hand with Compute Engine general release

Among the hive of activity at Google I/O, one of the search giant’s more interesting announcements has come in the form of a general release of Google Compute Engine (GCE), giving developers increased access to Google infrastructure.
Google’s latest push is a further move into the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) space, and culminates in the Silicon Valley company finding itself jockeying for position in a three horse race alongside Amazon and Microsoft.
Last month Microsoft ramped up its IaaS portfolio with the release of Infrastructure Services, enabling Windows Azure customers to migrate apps into the cloud, pricing it in direct competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Amazon, in comparison, announced later that week that its S3 cloud had broken the two trillion object mark – in other words, 20 objects for every person ever born on planet Earth.
So Google’s announcement was hotly anticipated. Yet anyone ...