[steren]

(App Engine PM here) The App Engine APIs will be present in the Go 1.11 runtime when it goes GA and until it is turned down. We do not know exactly which future version of the runtime will stop supporting them.

We are working on Google Cloud standalone products to replace most missing features (e.g. Cloud Scheduler for cron jobs). Not all of them are ready yet.

App Engine APIs were great when there was no alternative (when GCP did not exist, or when App Engine could not use arbitrary packages), but at the same time, contributed to the "lock-in" of App Engine, which was one of the main criticism. We believe it is in the long term benefit of our users to use standalone Google Cloud or third party services, instead of replying on APIs only accessible in App Engine.

[warrentr]

Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense and hopefully replacements are generally available before we lose the old apis.