Google I/O has some good news for Google App Engine developers. Some of their key requests have been addressed by Google in the form of an update to the GAE. Plans to set up more than three data centers in Europe means GAE is getting global.

European data centers simply mean developers do not have to worry about data restrictions. That is a really big deal for our European customers who want local data centers not only for better performance but also for legal reasons. Their apps will run out of the EU and their data will reside there.

To solve the GAE issues, Google has added Geopoint support to search APIs, which means developers can store latitude and longitude that can then be incorporated into search results. According to Greg D’Alesandre, GAE senior product manager, Geoqueries are very common for mobile apps.

Also, building mobile backends for Android and iOS using GAE has been made easier, with the new Cloud Endpoint technology. Right now, developers need a client library to make sure authentication is working right and they don’t really want to learn about all that stuff. Mobile developers just want to quickly bring up a back end and read/write info into it, D’Alesandre said.

Many people expected Google to announce the general availability of Cloud SQL, but what they got was the option to sign up for the database service now, which had been previously limited to use by 10,000 customers.

PageSpeed has been integrated to the App Engine and can now be turned on with a button click. PageSpeed lets App Engine sites serve up static content much faster than they normally would.

Would all this help Google succeed in selling its PaaS to the developers? For one thing, there’s competition in the form of Microsoft Azure and Heroku.