Case Study: Getaround achieves rapid innovation and effortless scalability with Google Cloud Platform (App Engine)

Car Sharing Service Hits the Fast Track with Google App Engine

Getaround, a San Francisco–based car‑sharing startup founded by Elliot Kroo, needed to build an innovative, web‑based marketplace quickly while avoiding heavy infrastructure costs. The team required a platform that could scale automatically, be easy to update as they expanded to new cities, and let them focus on product development rather than server maintenance.

They built on Google App Engine, using features like the High‑Replication Datastore, MapReduce and front/back‑end instances to provide secure, scalable storage, reporting and one‑command deployments. As a result Getaround added features rapidly (search filters, fraud detection), avoided hiring extra ops staff or buying servers, handled spikes like signing up 1,600 cars in 24 hours, and won TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 while expanding into multiple cities.

Getaround

Elliot Kroo

Founder and Director of Engineering