Since expanding Firebase to become Google’s mobile application development platform at Google I/O last year, our amazing community of developers has created over 1 million Firebase projects.
We’re thrilled so many of you use and trust us. While Firebase is a full suite of products for building and growing apps, we know that some apps need more than we offer out-of-the-box. That’s why we’re bringing Firebase much closer to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to serve even the most demanding applications, whether you’re a new startup or a large enterprise.
Product Integrations
Firebase already shares the same account and billing system as GCP, so you can attach Firebase services to your GCP project and vice-versa. This makes for powerful combinations, such as exporting raw event data from Firebase Analytics into BigQuery for ad-hoc analysis. Starting today, we’re beginning to share products too.
Cloud Functions
First, Firebase developers have been asking for ways to extend their app’s functionality without spinning up a server, and Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you do just that. Cloud Functions is our new event-driven serverless compute offering that enters public beta today. The infrastructure is shared between Cloud and Firebase, allowing you to invoke a function or access resources from throughout the Cloud/Firebase ecosystem. For more information, read the announcement on the Firebase blog and Cloud blog.
Cloud Storage
Next, we’re bringing Firebase Storage closer to Cloud Storage. Firebase Storage launched 10 months ago, and lets you easily upload and download files from your device directly to Cloud Storage. Previously we gave you a single bucket for your files. Now we’re fully aligning the two products and letting you use any Cloud Storage bucket, from any global region and from any storage class, all straight from the Firebase SDK. To reflect this alignment we’re renaming the product Cloud Storage for Firebase. Read more in our blog post.
Stay tuned for more product integrations in the future as Firebase continues to provide direct client-side access to GCP infrastructure through our iOS, Web, and Android SDKs.
Streamlined Terms of Service
We love lawyers almost as much as developers, so we’re extending GCP’s Terms of Service to cover several Firebase products. This makes Firebase and Cloud simpler to evaluate and use together. Products to be covered include: Authentication, Hosting, Storage, Functions, and Test Lab. Our streamlined Terms of Service will take effect soon.
The Big Picture
Firebase brings together the best of Google on mobile — whether that’s Google’s flagship advertising solutions like AdMob and AdWords, or Google’s analytics expertise in the form of Firebase Analytics.
Google Cloud Platform lets you to benefit from the institutional knowledge Google has developed from almost two decades of running global-scale computing infrastructure.
By bringing together the ease-of-use of Firebase with the full-range of GCP infrastructure offerings, we’re better able to serve you up and down the stack. If you’re a startup using Firebase to quickly get to market, you can now easily scale into a full public cloud. If you’re an existing business running on GCP who wants to ship a mobile app, we’ve got you covered too.
We can’t wait to see what you build with Firebase and Google Cloud Platform!