The Google Plugin for Eclipse makes it easier to build native Android apps that can take data with them wherever they go Google on Tuesday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco detailed an upgrade to its Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE), which assists with linking Android mobile devices and data residing on the Google App Engine cloud platform.Previously referred to as App Engine Tooling for Android, version 2.4 of GPE provides RPC tooling and C2DM (Cloud to Device Messaging) capabilities for App Engine and Android, said Brad Abrams, Google’s product manager for cloud developer tooling.[ Google also gave a sneak peak of its upcoming “Ice Cream Sandwich” release of the Android OS, which accommodates multiple device form factors. | Keep up with the latest in developer news with InfoWorld’s Developer World newsletter. | Follow Paul Krill on Twitter. ] GPE 2.4 is currently in what Abrams characterized as an early beta stage of development. He said the plug-in saves users from manually wiring App Engine to Android. “The tooling just makes it significantly easier.”Chris Ramsdale, product manager for Google Web Toolkit and GPE, said in a blog post that “with GPE 2.4 it’s much easier to build native Android apps that can take data with them wherever they go. And there’s no better place to host your back-end service and store your data than Google’s cloud service, App Engine.”Version 2.4 also features the ability to develop App Engine-connected Android projects, with an Eclipse project wizard generating Android and GWT clients capable of talking to the same App Engine back end using the same RPC code and business logic. The beta release of GPE 2.4 is now available. The Android Developer Tools plug-in will need to be installed first.This article, “Google plug-in links Android mobile devices with App Engine cloud,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter. Development ToolsCloud ComputingTechnology Industry