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Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

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Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#61

Post by Piskvorrr »

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…

Meh. This is just a crisis-response PR move: "look at all the flak we're getting at HN, do something NOW!!! (And then go back to the support-slumber as usual)" Do you believe anything would change if it were not for the above post making it to HN frontpage?

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#62

Post by Piskvorrr »

bad_user wrote: post #54
flukus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it's often the most effective way. Companies pay a lot for social media monitoring and anything that gets a lot of tweets they'll act on.

Well obviously some companies disagree. Interactions on Twitter are shallow, which makes support interactions risky and unsatisfactory for the customer ;-) Which is why any sane company will only reply " Please mail us at ... ".

"...at blackhole@example.com", usually.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#63

Post by Piskvorrr »

gigatexal wrote: post #30
kyrra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been some updates on this situation for those that caught it earlier today. Original post has been updated about being contacted by Firebase: https://medium.com/@contact_16315/firebase-costs-increased-b... Firebase founder comment on Medium about it: https://medium.com/@startupandrew/firebase-founder-here-im-v... (and he posted the same thing on the HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14359801 )…

I was being needlessly trolly but glad there's some dialog happening. And I'm sure this will get worked out.

Yup. Same as usual: "unless you are in the Old Boys Club or you raise a great stink, we ignore you." That's not really what I would call "a dialog happening."

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#64

Post by nikanj »

user5994461 wrote: post #55
teddyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said two years ago¹, Google is too large to have actual customers, per se, since any group of paying users is still too small for Google to need to pay attention to. ① https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9912754

Bullshit. Any telco operator has millions of customers and it handles support just fine. Any bank has millions of customers and it does support just fine. Google enterprise products (Cloud, app engine, apps) are nowhere near that number. They have no excuse for not having support.

You must be living with different telcos and banks than the rest of us. They often frequent the lists of most hated companies, for example [1] has good representation from both industries.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-most-hated-companies-...

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#65

Post by teddyh »

user5994461 wrote: post #55
teddyh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said two years ago¹, Google is too large to have actual customers, per se, since any group of paying users is still too small for Google to need to pay attention to. ① https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9912754

Bullshit. Any telco operator has millions of customers and it handles support just fine. Any bank has millions of customers and it does support just fine. Google enterprise products (Cloud, app engine, apps) are nowhere near that number. They have no excuse for not having support.

I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying Google couldn’t have acceptable support. I’m saying they don’t have to; there is simply no perceptible downside to them if they don’t.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#66

Post by josephg »

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?

Thanks for the history lesson grasshopper. I have used wave - I was on the google Wave team here in Sydney. I was working on it the day the project was cancelled. (An intern then a contractor though, not a FTE, for reasons that are obvious in retrospect.)

I'm quite aware it was opensourced - I was part of the 6 person skeleton crew that opensourced it. Look me up in the codebase if you like - grep for comments in the Apache Wave codebase by @gentle. I think I still have commit access.

To catch you up, the opensource effort floundered. Unsurprisingly the 350k lines of dense, complicated, glitchy GWT java code we threw over the wall hasn't found the community of experienced developers it needs to fix bugs and add features. Its barely had a commit land in the last 3 years.

Like reader for you, Wave's cancellation was somewhat personal for me. Here's a secondary tragedy you might not know if you've only read Wave's wikipedia page: About 6 months before Wave was cancelled, Google bought AppJet (makers of Etherpad). Their team came to Sydney to work on Wave. After Wave was cancelled, for guessable reasons the AppJet team would stay at google for the next few years. They got stuck working on non-etherpad, non-wave projects. Their team eventually split apart and would never be reunited. The tragedy of google Wave resulted in not 1 but 2 innovative collaborative editors dying.

Do I trust Google to maintain projects I care about? No, duh. Picasa. Google Buzz. Protobuf spent years being unmaintained. Sparrow (the email client). Google Code Search. Orkut. GTalk's commitment to open messaging protocols. Glass.

If firebase doesn't get enough traction, do you think they'll keep it around, SLAs or no? I wouldn't bet money on it. I certainly wouldn't bet my business or professional reputation on it.

> All of Google's enterprise offerings have support. I know, because I actually work in such a support team.

Great. So why did google stop returning calls and emails from HomeAutomation? This thread exists because one of firebase's cofounders dropped the ball on an email. Why did a busy cofounder result in a complete communications blackout to a paying customer?

https://medium.com/@contact_16315/firebase-costs-increased-b...

There's an old piece of wisdom that the only way to get google to fix something is to either know a google engineer or complain loudly enough on social media. Yesterday that saying seemed to still be true.

I'm sure you work really hard to fight this problem at Google. Thankyou for that. I can't imagine its an easy job. But Google has a long way to go before I'm willing to lock my product in to one of their newish services.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#67

Post by gigatexal »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #63
gigatexal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being needlessly trolly but glad there's some dialog happening. And I'm sure this will get worked out.

Yup. Same as usual: "unless you are in the Old Boys Club or you raise a great stink, we ignore you." That's not really what I would call "a dialog happening."

Kudos to HN for being the platform for raising said "stink"

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#68

Post by user5994461 »

teddyh wrote: post #65
user5994461 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Any telco operator has millions of customers and it handles support just fine. Any bank has millions of customers and it does support just fine. Google enterprise products (Cloud, app engine, apps) are nowhere near that number. They have no excuse for not having support.

I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying Google couldn’t have acceptable support. I’m saying they don’t have to ; there is simply no perceptible downside to them if they don’t.

That is true for all their free public services. They are build without support. Can't support 1 billion free users.

That is untrue for all entreprisey services. They must have support.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#69

Post by user5994461 »

nikanj wrote: post #64
user5994461 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Any telco operator has millions of customers and it handles support just fine. Any bank has millions of customers and it does support just fine. Google enterprise products (Cloud, app engine, apps) are nowhere near that number. They have no excuse for not having support.

You must be living with different telcos and banks than the rest of us. They often frequent the lists of most hated companies, for example [1] has good representation from both industries. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-most-hated-companies-...

I don't have much to complain about all the providers I had in my life.

Sure, I had to wait 15 minutes on the phone a few times, or send letters now and then. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Re: Open sourcing the Firebase SDKs

#70

Post by jamest »

hueving wrote: post #48
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?

Both Fabric & Firebase (pre-acqusition) had great support cultures. I think we have a good shot at improving how Google approaches support for Firebase.

The proof will be in the results. Hopefully we can share those in the future.

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