Google is closing down App Maker, its development tool for non-programmers. The announcement was made two weeks after it acquired AppSheet, a tool aimed at a similar market to App Maker. 

App Maker was first announced in 2016 as a "low code" development tool that non-programmers could use to create apps by dragging and dropping widgets onto a user interface. This created a basic app that could be customized by adding business logic using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery. At the moment App Maker is part of Google's G Suite development tool, but Google has said it has "low usage", hence the decision to close it.

The closing process will take place over the rest of 2020, with final shutdown in January 2021. For the moment the service is being maintained, but is no longer under active development. From April 15, 2020, you will no longer be able to create new App Maker apps, but you will still be able to edit and deploy existing apps.

From January 19, 2021, all existing App Maker apps will stop working and developers won't have access to them any longer. This isn't quite the full picture, as App maker data stored in Cloud SQL will remain unchanged and continue to follow the policies established by the owner's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.

The closing of App Maker leaves any organization that was making full use of it without a direct replacement, though Google is recommending checking out AppSheet, App Engine, and Google Forms as all three occupy a similar niche.

Specifically, Google says if you use App Maker to automate business processes, you should be able to use AppSheet which provides a no-code development platform for application software and allows users to create mobile, tablet, and web applications using data sources like Google Drive, DropBox, Office 365, and other cloud-based spreadsheet and database platforms.

Those using App Maker to develop apps are recommended to use App Engine to build and deploy applications on a fully managed platform, while those using App Maker for data collection should use Google Forms according to Google which claims that this has many new features that were not available when App Maker launched.

More Information

Google AppMaker

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