eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Google has replaced its old Google API Console with a new, expanded and redesigned Google Cloud Console to help developers organize and use the more than 60 APIs now offered by Google.
The new console was announced by Akshay Kannan, the product manager on the Google Cloud Console Team, in an Oct. 29 post on the Google Developers Blog.
“Back in 2010, we launched the Google APIs Console, enabling you to manage multiple Google APIs from a single, centralized console,” wrote Kannan. “Today, we are introducing the Google Cloud Console, our next evolution of the APIs Console. The new Google Cloud Console makes managing the over 60 Google APIs housed within easier than ever. It brings an entirely new visual design and integrates tightly with our Cloud Platform services, enabling you to manage an end-to-end application deployment.”
Developers have been seeing glimpses of the upcoming features of the new console over the last few weeks when they used the old version, wrote Kannan, and they were given the ability to opt-in to try the new version. Soon the new cloud console will be set as the default choice for the console by Google, though users will have the ability to revert back to the old version.
The new Google Cloud Console includes an entirely new visual design with hierarchical navigation and a friendly new URL structure, wrote Kannan. “We’ve also simplified the process of getting API credentials,” he wrote. “Now, you can register an app on the platform you are building on, then see all the possible credential types for your application, making it easier to quickly grab the credentials you need.”
Google is often busy making improvements and advances in its cloud platform components and services for developers.
Earlier in October, Google released several technical papers to help cloud developers learn more about the development tools it offers through its Google Compute Engine services. The papers, “Overview of Google Compute Engine for Cloud Developers” and “Building High Availability Applications on Google Compute Engine,” offer insights and details about how the platform can be used and developed for business users.
In September, Google unveiled its second version update of the Google App Engine since August, with the latest release 1.8.4 including a host of features that the company says will make it more flexible and simpler for developers to use for their applications. Included in 1.8.4 is support for Dynamic Web Projects in Eclipse to better support Google Cloud Endpoints and App Engine Backends, as well as fixes for several bugs. One other important new feature is the ability of Google App Engine to handle differential snapshots of a Google Compute Engine persistent disk, so that only the most recently changed data is updated.
The August launch of the previous App Engine 1.8.3 was also accompanied by deeper features for Google Compute Engine and the Google Cloud Datastore as the search giant continues to add functions and robustness to the Google Cloud Platform.
The new tools included Layer 3 load balancing for Google Compute Engine and improvements to the PHP runtime in the latest Google App Engine release. The Layer 3 load balancing capabilities were a key addition in the Google Compute Engine, to provide Google-scale throughput and fault tolerance to manage Internet applications.
In July, Google unveiled several new features in the Google Cloud Storage environment to make it easier for developers to manage, access and upload data into the cloud. Those new capabilities included automatic deletion policies, regional buckets and faster uploads as part of a wide range of services.
In June, Google unveiled a new Cloud Playground environment where developers can quickly try out ideas on a whim, without having to commit to setting up a local development environment that’s safe for testing coding experiments outside of the production infrastructure. The Cloud Playground is slated as a place where application developers can try out all kinds of things, from sample code to viewing how production APIs will behave, in a safe, controlled place without having to manage the testing environment, according to Google. The new Cloud Playground initially supports only Python 2.7 App Engine apps.