Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the stuff you are talking about are valid examples, but they are from 5-10 years ago. None of these probably will be built on PHP again. I can use the same reasoning and list some major critical applications and argue for Cobol, Fortan, etc. But it doesn't mean it's forward thinking.
We get requests for PHP all the time. In Urs' presentation today, the audience response at I/O was the strongest for three things specifically - open signups for GCE, sub-hour GCE billing, and GAE support for PHP. Slamming PHP is akin to slamming the x86 instruction set. It's besides the point. There are so many large "apps" that effectively use PHP as asm; we need to have a solution for customers that want to run op…
Is there a MySQL-like solution on GAE as well?