I had a very similar experience, unfortunately it wasn't feasible for me to migrate the site to another vendor, we just had to sit tight. It almost ruined the launch, which had a hard deadline. Fortunately we too had an understanding client, but being hamstrung was no fun at all.
The issue of the App Engine status page not reflecting reality is a very real one - we had contact with a Google engineer who told me that "this is affecting all our stuff" and I know that it went on for several days, but this wasn't reflected in the status chart; the severity of the issue was definitely not conveyed well enough.
I like the promise of App Engine, particularly the "instant" scalability which is great for sites that you know are going to get hammered as soon as they go live. But it really highlights the risk you take when you allow yourself to be locked into such an all-encompassing platform.
The issue of the App Engine status page not reflecting reality is a very real one - we had contact with a Google engineer who told me that "this is affecting all our stuff" and I know that it went on for several days, but this wasn't reflected in the status chart; the severity of the issue was definitely not conveyed well enough.
I like the promise of App Engine, particularly the "instant" scalability which is great for sites that you know are going to get hammered as soon as they go live. But it really highlights the risk you take when you allow yourself to be locked into such an all-encompassing platform.