Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced plans to revamp its Firebase service by expanding upon the already existing features.
The company made the announcement during the Google I/O developer conference that was held yesterday, May 18. The firm took ownership of Firebase in 2014 and since then the number of developers on Firebase has increased from 110,000 developers to more than 470,000.
Alphabet is planning to convert Firebase into an all-rounded Google service. According to Google’s head of the developer product group, Jason Titus, his team has been seeking out different kinds of developers so that the firm can collect feedback on some of the major aspects of application development.
The previous version of Firebase was somewhat similar to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Parse because it offered hosting tools, user authentication tools and database service. The new version of Firebase incorporates most of the developer tools that were previously available such as Google Cloud Messaging and combines them with new services. The new update means that the company is turning Firebase into an integrated app platform with more developers on board.
The service now features deeper integration of services such as analytics services which was developed by the same team that made Google Analytics. The only thing that developers will need to do is to include a few lines of code to their applications. By doing so, they will give basic user information to Firebase directly from the app. Firebase can then use this data to create audience sections and give developers the ability to analyze user behavior more closely to find out the impact of their advertising campaigns.
The audience sections are very significant for two other features that the team included onto the service. The first feature is the ability to configure the apps remotely, and this is useful especially when carrying out A/B testing. The other feature that was included is the notifications system. All Firebase users now have access to unlimited notifications which are supported over the web, on Android and iOS.
