Firebase is a set of hosting services for any type of application (Android, iOS, Javascript, Node.js, Java, Unity, PHP, C++ ...). It offers NoSQL and real-time hosting of databases, content, social authentication (Google, Facebook, Twitter and Github), and notifications, or services, such as a real-time communication server.

History

Firebase evolved from Envolve, a prior startup founded by James Tamplin and Andrew Lee in 2011. Envolve provided developers an API that enables the integration of online chat functionality into their websites. After releasing the chat service, Tamplin and Lee found that it was being used to pass application data that were not chat messages. Developers were using Envolve to sync application data such as game state in real time across their users. Tamplin and Lee decided to separate the chat system and the real-time architecture that powered it. They founded Firebase as a separate company in 2011 and it launched to the public in April 2012. Firebase's first product was the Firebase Realtime Database, an API that synchronizes application data across iOS, Android, and Web devices, and stores it on Firebase's cloud. The product assists software developers in building real-time, collaborative applications. In May 2012, a month after the beta launch, Firebase raised $1.1 million in

seed funding Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

from

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

ists

Flybridge Capital Partners Flybridge Capital Partners is an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Boston and New York City. History In 2001, Flybridge Capital was founded under the name IDG Ventures Boston, an international venture investment branch of the Int ...

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as wel ...

Founder Collective Founder or Founders may refer to: Places *Founders Park, a stadium in South Carolina, formerly known as Carolina Stadium * Founders Park, a waterside park in Islamorada, Florida Arts, entertainment, and media * Founders (''Star Trek''), the ali ...

, and

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...

. In June 2013, the company further raised $5.6 million in

Series A funding A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

from

Union Square Ventures Union Square Ventures (USV) is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. The firm has backed more than 130 startups, including Twitter, Etsy, Stripe, Coinbase, Zynga, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, Meetup, Kickstarter, MongoDB, Flur ...

and

. In 2014, Firebase launched two products: Firebase Hosting and Firebase Authentication. This positioned the company as a

mobile backend as a service Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), also known as "backend as a service", is a model for providing web app and mobile app developers with a way to link their applications to backend cloud storage and APIs exposed by back end applications while ...

. In October 2014, Firebase was acquired by Google. A year later, in October 2015, Google acquired Divshot, an

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

web-hosting platform, to merge it with the Firebase team. In May 2016, at

Google I/O Google I/O (or simply I/O) is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. "I/O" stands for Input/Output, as well as the slogan "Innovation in the Open". The event's format is similar to Google Developer Day. Hi ...

, the company's annual developer conference, Firebase introduced Firebase Analytics and announced that it was expanding its services to become a unified backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for mobile developers. Firebase now integrates with various other Google services, including Google Cloud Platform, AdMob, and

Google Ads Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...

to offer broader products and scale for developers.

Google Cloud Messaging Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) was a mobile notification service developed by Google that enables third-party application developers to send notification data or information from developer-run servers to applications that target the Google Androi ...

, the Google service to send push notifications to Android devices, was superseded by a Firebase product,

Firebase Cloud Messaging Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), formerly known as Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), is a cross-platform cloud solution for messages and notifications for Android, iOS, and web applications, which as of June 2022 can be used at no cost. Firebase Cl ...

, which added the functionality to deliver push notifications to both iOS and web devices. In July 2016, Google announced that it was acquiring the mobile developer platform LaunchKit, which specialized in app developer marketing, and would be folding it into the Firebase Growth Tools team. In January 2017, Google acquired Fabric and

Crashlytics Crashlytics was a Boston, Massachusetts-based software company founded in May 2011 by entrepreneurs Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert. Crashlytics helps collecting, analyzing and organizing app crash reports. Its main product is a software devel ...

from

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

to add those services to Firebase. In October 2017, Firebase launched Cloud Firestore, a real-time

document database A document-oriented database, or document store, is a computer program and data storage system designed for storing, retrieving and managing document-oriented information, also known as semi-structured data. Document-oriented databases are one ...

as the successor product to the original Firebase Realtime Database.

User privacy controversies

Firebase has been claimed to be used by Google to track users without their knowledge. On July 14, 2020, a lawsuit was filed accusing Google of violating federal wire tap law and California privacy law. It stated that through Firebase, Google collected and stored user data, logging what the user was looking at in many types of apps, despite the user following Google's own instructions to turn off the web and app activity collected by the company. The lawsuit was dismissed in January 2022, with Chief US District Judge Richard Seeborg ruling that a promise to avoid collecting user data did not amount to a contract.

References

External links

* {{Google Inc. 2014 mergers and acquisitions Cloud computing providers Cloud platforms Companies established in 2011 Google acquisitions Google Cloud Software companies established in 2011 Software companies of the United States