Firebase as Google Cloud Onramp
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Lenny Bogdonoff, co-founder and CTO of Milk Video, on the past, present and future of Javascript
Google bought Firebase because they saw a whole category of developers who would eventually become heavy cloud computing customers
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The real value of Firebase was not the database itself, it was the developer entry point into Google Cloud. Firebase let a small web or mobile team ship login, data sync, file storage, and push notifications without learning servers first. Once that app had users and traffic, Google could pull the same team deeper into Cloud Storage, functions, analytics, and the rest of its infrastructure stack.
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Firebase came out of the realtime app wave, where developers wanted chat, multiplayer, and live collaboration without running their own backend. That made it a natural first backend for front end heavy teams moving from static sites and single page apps toward more dynamic products.
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Google integrated Firebase directly into Google Cloud after the 2014 acquisition. Over time Firebase projects shared the same account system and connected into Cloud Storage and server side tools, which turned a beginner friendly product into an onramp for broader cloud spend.
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The pattern shows up again in newer backend platforms. Supabase and Convex both win developers by making database, auth, and storage feel instant, because the company that owns the first app backend often gets the later, higher value infrastructure workload as the app scales.
This playbook keeps getting stronger as app creation gets easier. The winning cloud platforms will keep packaging hard backend work into simple developer products, then expand from prototype workflows into production infrastructure, where usage grows with every active app and every new team added on top.