Google’s mobile app development platform Firebase, is now a deeper part of the Google Cloud. The company announced the same at its Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco today. With today’s announcements, Firebase has shifted perceptibly closer to the Google Cloud Platform and among other things, is getting support for the various storage options available on the platform.
In case you are unaware of it, Firebaes is a mobile app development platform that was acquired by Google way back in 2014. The platform has since been an integral part of the search engine giant’s suite of products and with today’s announcement, Google is moving the platform even nearer to the core of the company.
Firebase provides developers with with a SaaS back-end that saves them from going to the trouble of building their own infrastructure. Instead, they can focus upon what they do best — namely, focus on crating and growing their apps. Of course, once the app has become popular and its user base has grown beyond a certain point, the developer could need to set up his own stuff. Until then though, Firebase suffices.
Probably the most important announcement made today is the Cloud Functions integration. While elaborating over the integration, Google said that it was the single most requested feature from the Firebase community. The new SDKs that have been rolled out, are highly capable and among other things, can do stuff lile listening to events from Firebase Analytics and initiating Cloud Functions based on them based upon what it hears.
Firebase Storage is now Cloud Storage for Firebase. It also offers support for Nearline and Coldline (which are basically Google’s warehouses for data that is only periodically accessed.) Developers can also avoid a lot of trouble by choosing the region they want to store their data in. This has become more important of late considering that many countries have started throwing fits if their data is taken out of their borders.
Finally, Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service now covers Firebase, including all of its services like Authentication, Hosting, Storage, Functions and the Firebase Test Lab. Firebase analytics services on the other hand, will soon be moved under the Google Analytics Terms of Service in the near future. Shifting things together legally, means that Google’s lawyers wont have to read multiple terms of services in case they need to review the Cloud platform and Firebase.
