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Did a Firebase team member already comment on this? In a few hours Google will present some new Firebase features at io17, and I would expect them to avoid bad

by stemuk 9y ago

Did a Firebase team member already comment on this? In a few hours Google will present some new Firebase features at io17, and I would expect them to avoid bad press now as much as possible...

kuschku 9y ago
That's probably the purpose of this post — the best way to get support from Google, after all, is still by posting a story on reddit, twitter or HN. Which is pretty sad.
- stemuk 9y ago
  I think it's kind of weird to see Google/Firebase team members swarming around in dozens on HN when they present a new feature, which seems to me like a coordinated marketing effort by Google. But once problems arise or they get criticized by their own users, no one seems to be available for a comment.
  - mysterydip 9y ago
    I was about to post the same thing. Of the two Google cloud stories I saw on here yesterday, it felt like one in three posts had "disclaimer: I work on the Google cloud team" or something to that effect. As of this writing, there's 100 comments over 4 hours and not a peep from any of them that I see.
    - stemuk 9y ago
      Sometimes I am wondering who is actually steering the discussion to a certain point. I wouldn't go so far to call it censorship, but if the Google employees take over the comment section, it is very hard to call the flow of information "unbiased". YCombinator shouldn't let companies use Hacker News as a marketing tool, at least not to the extent Google does.
  - redwood 9y ago
    I was thinking the same thing. There's a giant circle of patting each other on the back every time they roll something out, and always have that very precise disclaimer that they work for the big G. Then again, as a meta comment I will point out that the fact that both you and I so clearly notice this suggest that we are following these updates much more closely then most of the folks here.
    - stemuk 9y ago
      True, I used to be really interested in Firebase and their set of products. But because of several pretty bad experiences related to vendor lock-in and (very) high prices I switched over to an open source alternative. It might not be so well known, but I found http://www.deepstream.io http://www.deepstream.io to have a relatively similar feature set, without having to deal with bad support (if it bothers you, just fix it yourself) and high prices, since you are the one who picks what suits you best.
      - SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
        I'm going to give a shoutout to https://feathersjs.com https://feathersjs.com I have yet to see a platform that's as flexible and robust, with the added bonus of being real-time.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
      I don't think you have to be following these updates very closely to notice.... like me.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - kllrnohj 9y ago
    Or it's just engineers that swarm around since that's the demographic here but this needs a response from PR, not from engineering. What do you want google/firebase engineers to say? The engineering response is pretty clear-cut. Polling every minute from an uncached SSL connection is expensive, don't do that. That's pretty obvious and the author admits this was a mistake. The complaint is about everything that's not the engineering part - support & communication.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Expensive? I'm sorry, I can have 50'000 devices poll every minute via an uncached SSL connection on my 16$/month server from Online.net, including bandwidth and traffic costs. I'm not sure what you're smoking, but I want that, too. Seriously, at Google, TLS is terminated in hardware, and bandwidth costs less than a cent per terabyte for ISPs or Google. The costs that this caused are basically nil. (This, btw, is why I'm using kubernetes on rented bare metal, paying 30$ a month, for what would cost me, including traffic, around 900$ (Google Cloud with rented servers) to 63'000$ (Firebase) a month.)
    - ww520 9y ago
      The author admitted it's a mistake to use Firebase from the start.
- jpalomaki 9y ago
  I would assume you get the support if you pay for it. Google, Azure and AWS seem to have all gone the same way. You select the service level and pay monthly fee. I don't know if this support covers Firebase. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/ https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/
  - jhall1468 9y ago
    Yes and no. If an AWS customer ran up a bill like this, Amazon would absolutely cover them. They've done it hundreds of times. There's a very different culture between Google and Amazon when it comes to customer service.
jjjjoe 9y ago
Googler here. I've flagged this (especially the part about the dropped billing case) internally. Note that this was posted to HN around midnight Pacific, so it's quite possible nobody from the Firebase team had seen it yet.

by stemuk 9y ago

Did a Firebase team member already comment on this? In a few hours Google will present some new Firebase features at io17, and I would expect them to avoid bad press now as much as possible...

kuschku 9y ago

That's probably the purpose of this post — the best way to get support from Google, after all, is still by posting a story on reddit, twitter or HN. Which is pretty sad.

stemuk 9y ago
I think it's kind of weird to see Google/Firebase team members swarming around in dozens on HN when they present a new feature, which seems to me like a coordinated marketing effort by Google. But once problems arise or they get criticized by their own users, no one seems to be available for a comment.
- mysterydip 9y ago
  I was about to post the same thing. Of the two Google cloud stories I saw on here yesterday, it felt like one in three posts had "disclaimer: I work on the Google cloud team" or something to that effect. As of this writing, there's 100 comments over 4 hours and not a peep from any of them that I see.
  - stemuk 9y ago
    Sometimes I am wondering who is actually steering the discussion to a certain point. I wouldn't go so far to call it censorship, but if the Google employees take over the comment section, it is very hard to call the flow of information "unbiased". YCombinator shouldn't let companies use Hacker News as a marketing tool, at least not to the extent Google does.
- redwood 9y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. There's a giant circle of patting each other on the back every time they roll something out, and always have that very precise disclaimer that they work for the big G. Then again, as a meta comment I will point out that the fact that both you and I so clearly notice this suggest that we are following these updates much more closely then most of the folks here.
  - stemuk 9y ago
    True, I used to be really interested in Firebase and their set of products. But because of several pretty bad experiences related to vendor lock-in and (very) high prices I switched over to an open source alternative. It might not be so well known, but I found http://www.deepstream.io http://www.deepstream.io to have a relatively similar feature set, without having to deal with bad support (if it bothers you, just fix it yourself) and high prices, since you are the one who picks what suits you best.
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
      I'm going to give a shoutout to https://feathersjs.com https://feathersjs.com I have yet to see a platform that's as flexible and robust, with the added bonus of being real-time.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
    I don't think you have to be following these updates very closely to notice.... like me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kllrnohj 9y ago
  Or it's just engineers that swarm around since that's the demographic here but this needs a response from PR, not from engineering. What do you want google/firebase engineers to say? The engineering response is pretty clear-cut. Polling every minute from an uncached SSL connection is expensive, don't do that. That's pretty obvious and the author admits this was a mistake. The complaint is about everything that's not the engineering part - support & communication.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Expensive? I'm sorry, I can have 50'000 devices poll every minute via an uncached SSL connection on my 16$/month server from Online.net, including bandwidth and traffic costs. I'm not sure what you're smoking, but I want that, too. Seriously, at Google, TLS is terminated in hardware, and bandwidth costs less than a cent per terabyte for ISPs or Google. The costs that this caused are basically nil. (This, btw, is why I'm using kubernetes on rented bare metal, paying 30$ a month, for what would cost me, including traffic, around 900$ (Google Cloud with rented servers) to 63'000$ (Firebase) a month.)
  - ww520 9y ago
    The author admitted it's a mistake to use Firebase from the start.
jpalomaki 9y ago
I would assume you get the support if you pay for it. Google, Azure and AWS seem to have all gone the same way. You select the service level and pay monthly fee. I don't know if this support covers Firebase. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/ https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/
- jhall1468 9y ago
  Yes and no. If an AWS customer ran up a bill like this, Amazon would absolutely cover them. They've done it hundreds of times. There's a very different culture between Google and Amazon when it comes to customer service.

jjjjoe 9y ago

Googler here. I've flagged this (especially the part about the dropped billing case) internally. Note that this was posted to HN around midnight Pacific, so it's quite possible nobody from the Firebase team had seen it yet.