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Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

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Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#41

Post by ry_ry »

victorhooi wrote: post #25
josephg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed dumping on Google earlier too. I love firebase, but I've talked two companies I've worked with out of using it for new, mission critical projects. The earlier article made me feel completely vindicated in my recommendations. I simply have no trust that: - Google won't randomly cancel firebase (wave, reader, etc) - Google won't randomly, suddenly jack up the prices for firebase, leaving users in the lurch (a…

I think you've mischaracterised things a bit in your post - not sure if this is just because you're repeating what you read elsewhere? Anyhow, regarding the bullet points: 1. Google Wave was released an experimental consumer product, designed to combine the best of IM and email. According to the announcement, it was finally sunset due to lack of interest from the public. Personally, I was super excited about Wave - I…

>Did you personally use Wave yourself? Were you able to convert anybody else to using it?

I had Wave access (Gadgets were my primary interest in the platform) - With no disrespect to the team working on it, Wave was a muddled, slightly schizophrenic app that solved problems that didn't exist by trying to merge a whole bunch of stuff that already did.

Getting other people to use it was hampered by the problem of succinctly explaining to them what it did, and the (for a consumer product, at least) unintuitive UI.

That said, failed apps are the most interesting apps. As a dev it had a huge influence on my approach to problems and the merits doing one thing really well.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#42

Post by piyush_soni »

jamest wrote: post #10

[other Firebase founder] It was painful to read the article[1] this morning, especially since I was one of the people responsible for dropping the ball on getting Home Automation the credit to cover the overage a few weeks ago. We're working with the founder to make sure he's in a better spot. If you have similarly serious issues, my email is: james@firebase.com To address a couple of points that have been raised: 1.…

Thanks for responding to the issues and admitting the support has got worse since your association with Google. That's a big admission to make (are you sure Google doesn't punish people for revealing such things?). You might also want to tell 'other teams' in Google what's the perceived image of their support outside. What Google Support means for me for most of their services is - some 'internet forum' on which a few unpaid workers are trying to help others who are equally clueless, in return of some internet brownie points.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#43

Post by stemuk »

jamest wrote: post #10

[other Firebase founder] It was painful to read the article[1] this morning, especially since I was one of the people responsible for dropping the ball on getting Home Automation the credit to cover the overage a few weeks ago. We're working with the founder to make sure he's in a better spot. If you have similarly serious issues, my email is: james@firebase.com To address a couple of points that have been raised: 1.…

In particular I would love to see the query size change in the real-time database. This could either be achieved by compressing the JSON response, or by calculating the traffic differently.

As a user of Firebase about a year ago I saw much, much higher egress traffic from the Real-time database than I expected. To be specific, for testing purposes I set up a note-taking app, which (being a test) had the database size of 31kb. But here comes the weird part: by querying the database exactly 10 times, my console was showing 24.5mb of traffic, which is much higher than 31*10=310kb/0.31mb.

Ultimately this caused me to change tracks to an open-source alternative, but if changes would be made on that front I'd be willing to take another dive into Firebase.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#44

Post by kybernetikos »

ry_ry wrote: post #41
victorhooi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've mischaracterised things a bit in your post - not sure if this is just because you're repeating what you read elsewhere? Anyhow, regarding the bullet points: 1. Google Wave was released an experimental consumer product, designed to combine the best of IM and email. According to the announcement, it was finally sunset due to lack of interest from the public. Personally, I was super excited about Wave - I…

>Did you personally use Wave yourself? Were you able to convert anybody else to using it? I had Wave access (Gadgets were my primary interest in the platform) - With no disrespect to the team working on it, Wave was a muddled, slightly schizophrenic app that solved problems that didn't exist by trying to merge a whole bunch of stuff that already did. Getting other people to use it was hampered by the problem of succi…

We used it on my team at work and it was fantastic for design discussions and the like. Incidentally, while slack, dropbox paper etc all target this space somewhat successfully, I think there's still a lot that could be done here.

Getting a huge user base for wave would have been easy - simply incorporate its features gradually into gmail, and make it so that if you're in a threaded conversation with someone with a wave server you have all the extra features, otherwise it's just normal email.

This is in fact what I assumed google were up to, since they were huge on the email front and they described wave as the future of email.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#45

Post by victorhooi »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #39
victorhooi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've mischaracterised things a bit in your post - not sure if this is just because you're repeating what you read elsewhere? Anyhow, regarding the bullet points: 1. Google Wave was released an experimental consumer product, designed to combine the best of IM and email. According to the announcement, it was finally sunset due to lack of interest from the public. Personally, I was super excited about Wave - I…

It's my understanding that Google has ramped up enterprise cloud support by outsourcing it. We ran into evidence of this recently. It's not helpful when the heavily accented, scripted Indian support guy at the other end is less technically informed than yourself, and there's no magic phrase to get bumped up to the next support level. We're on Google Cloud Platform because of Kubernetes, and I'm dreading the day where…

Commenting on mobile - but no, GCP support is not outsourced. I deal with and am good friends with some of those on the frontline for GCP support - that team works a few cubicles down from me, and from what I've seen incredibly passionate about providing stellar support.

Are you sure you didn't perhaps just talk to a Googler who happened to be Indian? It's possible I'm misreading tone on the go - but 1. Google is very multicultural, 2. As a non-white, I admit I can be a little touchy when people assume things about technical chops based on your race, or what accent your English is.

Regarding the fact you felt the person you dealt with wasn't well informed, that's not good to hear. Do you want to 1:1 details to me?

Also, I assume you've purchased GCP support right? That's a paid offering, and having dealt with them as an outsider, they're pretty decent (I mean, you are paying them...). I only ask because sometimes people post in public forums and assume they're dealing with official support. Our actual enterprise support teams are separate.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#46

Post by dsun178 »

stemuk wrote: post #43
jamest wrote: post #10

[other Firebase founder] It was painful to read the article[1] this morning, especially since I was one of the people responsible for dropping the ball on getting Home Automation the credit to cover the overage a few weeks ago. We're working with the founder to make sure he's in a better spot. If you have similarly serious issues, my email is: james@firebase.com To address a couple of points that have been raised: 1.…

In particular I would love to see the query size change in the real-time database. This could either be achieved by compressing the JSON response, or by calculating the traffic differently. As a user of Firebase about a year ago I saw much, much higher egress traffic from the Real-time database than I expected. To be specific, for testing purposes I set up a note-taking app, which (being a test) had the database size…

It looks like you need an offline-first solution like pouchdb or rxdb. The traffic would have been around 31kb, no mather how much you query.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#47

Post by mdekkers »

Top19 wrote: post #20
jamest wrote: post #10

[other Firebase founder] It was painful to read the article[1] this morning, especially since I was one of the people responsible for dropping the ball on getting Home Automation the credit to cover the overage a few weeks ago. We're working with the founder to make sure he's in a better spot. If you have similarly serious issues, my email is: james@firebase.com To address a couple of points that have been raised: 1.…

To my discredit I enjoyed dumping on Google earlier today with the Firebase support issue article. That being said this was a great response and I appreciate it. Also my first React Native app used Firebase and I have fond memories of setting that up :) I like that item #1 was very direct...essentially: "look the support got worse and it's not good but we're working on it". SIDE NOTE: I don't get how a lot of people…

That being said this was a great response and I appreciate it

Do you really think "Our sub-par standards got outed in a forum dedicated to our core target market so we did a spot fix and made some noise about how we will improve" qualifies as a great response?

A great response would be "We are aware our support is not inline with what a service like this requires. We will implement the following measures over period X"

This is more like "oops, sorry we got found out"

"Cloud" support in general is dreadful, especially given the extremely high premium you pay for *aaS services.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#48

Post by hueving »

jamest wrote: post #10

[other Firebase founder] It was painful to read the article[1] this morning, especially since I was one of the people responsible for dropping the ball on getting Home Automation the credit to cover the overage a few weeks ago. We're working with the founder to make sure he's in a better spot. If you have similarly serious issues, my email is: james@firebase.com To address a couple of points that have been raised: 1.…

>1. We're aware that as we've integrated with Google our support response time & quality has decreased. I'm working with our team to do better.

Can you though? I've yet to see any good google support for any software product. How much leeway do you actually have to change the support culture of a company that doesn't care about support?

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#50

Post by bad_user »

Brahma111 wrote: post #38

This post shows, how mis-informed the community can be. If you have been following up Google Cloud and Firebase, most of the questions regarding long term support, phasing out and Google turning rogue wouldn't be asked. Firebase is one key aspect of Google's cloud strategy. Pretty much everything on Mobile services is tied with Firebase, some way or the other. We have now built 2 products on Firebase and are reasonab…

> Tweeting to the Firebase handle on issues never get replied.

Is that really how you expect to get support?

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