title: Google Cloud Datastore with and w/o Protocol Buffers
body: <p>While searching for information about the Google Cloud Datastore, I stumbled upon two different official documentation branches that seem to have the same content in terms of concepts, but provide code samples based on two different APIs:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><a href="https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/getstarted/start_java/" rel="nofollow">Here</a> examples are based on the Protocol Buffers API.</li>
  <li><a href="https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/datastore/" rel="nofollow">Here</a> the same content is provided with examples based on the standard Google App Engine SDK.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Seems like the same set of actions are supported by both the APIs, but I'm not able to figure out what are the substantial differences between the two. Why should I choose one instead of the other, and why Google is offering both?</p>