Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS)

Google team launched an important new release of Firebase that consolidates several of Google’s mobile offerings into a single product. The new Firebase reduces the complexity of building mobile client and back-end services and provides tools to help you grow your user base, earn revenue from your app and collect and analyse app-event data. Cloud Platform gives developers comprehensive solutions with a focus on ease of use and speed – all without having to manage infrastructure.

Firebase

Modern tools should handle the complexity of real-time applications on behalf of developers.

With Firebase, you can easily build a scalable and loosely coupled system. For example, you can add iOS or web clients without any impact to existing Android clients. If you need back-end services, App Engine Flexible Environment can add new back-end capacity automatically.

Google also published a new solution document that demonstrates how to build a native chat application with a step-by-step guide and sample code for both an Android app and an App Engine-based backend service. Build a mobile app using Firebase and App Engine flexible environment shows how to handle interactions between the Android app and servlets running in App Engine Flexible Environment. Firebase is a unified app platform for iOS, Android, and the web that effortlessly syncs your data across all devices. Without requiring any server-side management, Cloud Functions lets you write single-purpose functions that respond to events.

Recommended for:

Limiting on-device data storage by storing JSON data in the Firebase Real Time Database and files in Firebase Storage.

Sending notifications with Firebase Cloud Messaging.

Automated real-time data synchronisation across multiple devices.

Gracefully handling the offline case.

Authenticating users through a variety of identity providers.

Rapid development of a backend service.

Not recommended for:

Apps that need a back-end service to modify the synchronised data.

Mobile Backend at Google Scale

With App Engine, focus only on differentiating, high-level business logic using your favorite language. If you are doing container-based development, try Container Engine powered by Kubernetes to automate deployment and scaling of your containerized applications. For developers with existing or legacy projects who want the full control of bare VMs, Compute Engine offers high performance VMs with industry-leading pricing and combustibility. Use standard REST APIs or try the open source gRPC project for a lightweight data format used internally by engineering teams at Google.

Storage & Analytics

Store binary media or structured data on Google’s secure, global infrastructure. Choose from managed SQL to NoSQL options, including our category-defining archival product Nearline.

With your data on Cloud Platform, unlock insights with Google’s pioneering big data analytics products. Query petabytes of data with BigQuery, all without managing any infrastructure. Process both offline and real-time streaming data from your mobile apps using a unified programming model with Data-flow.

Speed is a Feature

Speed is a feature, and latency makes or breaks the mobile user experience. Google’s private fiber network spans the globe with over 70 points of presence across 33 countries, meaning your app data reaches users with the lowest latency possible. Whether it’s raw application data or media-rich imagery and video, your app data travels Google’s global network from our data centers to your users, anywhere in the world.