I agree with this, to a point. But what's missing in this discussion are the things that firebase (and others) brought to the table that were new; real time pus

I agree with this, to a point. But what's missing in this discussion are the things that firebase (and others) brought to the table that were new; real time push, and adminless backend ("serverless" term they and other others try to popularize fails to describe what it actually is). I'm personally thankful the nosql hype has finally subsided, and everyone recognizes it for what it is, a tool in the box. Not everyone has made that realization yet, as other posts in this thread indicate. Server pushing data enables some really useful things, the archetypical example being online chat. Adminless backends are also very attractive to a lot of people, in particular front end devs who just want to build, not do a poor (insecure) job admining servers. I personally lament this "everyone's a server admin" culture we have come into in recent years. But those innovations aren't enough to make up for the deficits the author, and many here are describing. Like others have said, use Firebase for what it's intended, and when you really need to scale, be prepared to roll your own solution.