Why choosing Google Kubernetes Engine instead of Google AppEngine?

One overseen benefit of using GKE is to be independent from the cloud provider.

When using kubernetes it is much easier to migrate to another cloud provider or even to a private cloud.

As a rule of thumb, when using a propietary solution you are bound to a cloud provider for good and bad. For example what will you do when your cloud provider decides to deprecate a certain runtime.

When using open source solutions, even when they are managed you are still a free person.

Google Kubernetes Engine(GKE) is a cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Google App Engine(GAE) is basically google managed containers.

They both try to provide you similar main benefits(scalability, redundancy, rollouts, rollbacks, etc.). The main difference is in their philosophy: GKE tries to provide you very fine grained control over everything about your cluster. GAE tries to get you run your apps with as little configuration/management as possible.

With GKE you have more control, but also more work for you. You need to configure the network, security, software updates etc. With GAE you don't need to worry about many of these things, and you can focus on your app.