Google is previewing a new service aimed at web application developers. The preview release of the Google App Engine will let developers host, create and run applications as easily as they might create a blog, said the firm.

In his blog post, Kevin Gibbs, Google Tech Lead on the Google App Engine, said that the engine took the typical building blocks used by developers, and packaged them with a scalable infrastructure, meaning that developers could, "spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications."

The SDK gives access to Python application servers, GFS data store services, and Google's own scalable BigTable databases. As well as this, any apps developed using the tools will work seamlessly with Google apps, and developers have full access to the firms' APIs.

The preview version of the App engine is free, but limited to the first 10,000 people to sign up. Interested subscribers will need a Google log-in, such as that used with the Googlemail email service.

Although free, there are limits on usage. Applications should not use more than 500MB of total storage, 200m megacycles per day of CPU time, or 10GB of bandwidth per day. Also, all applications must be written in Python.