Young application development companies got some good news late last week, as Google became the latest tech giant to launch a platform aimed toward helping them grow. The Google Cloud Platform for Startups will award $100,000 credit to startups that are less than five years old, generate less than $500,000 in annual revenue and have received less than $5 million in overall investment. Applicants must already be part of a technology accelerator or incubator or have received venture capital funding, in order to prove their ability to pay back the credit.
As well as the $100,000, the startups will receive around-the-clock support for the Google Cloud Platform, the same one that Google itself uses for its search engine and YouTube. The product suite includes the Google App Engine, giving startups yet another option for integrating their apps with a major platform. Apple is in the process of launching its own application programming interfaces, including HealthKit, which will allow developers to link their software to the iPhone 6's Health application.
The Google Cloud Platform already counts the Khan Academy and Snapchat among its biggest clients. As far as startups go, one of the biggest success stories is Pinterest, which began with a dozen employees working with Amazon Web Services. All in all, app developers, even those whose financial and manpower resources are limited, are finding an increasing number of available options to work with, and major tech companies are making it easier for them.
"This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy: we want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure," wrote Google's Julie Pearl in a blog post. "Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google."