Google Gearing Up For Stronger Cloud Presence

Google announced this week that it’s acquired cloud hosted database Firebase, which promises clients it can “build realtime mobile and web apps in minutes.” Though neither has disclosed the deal’s terms, the search engine juggernaut will continue to offer Firebase services as part of the Google Cloud Platform line.

James Tamplin, the Co-Founder and CEO of Firebase, says they’ve joined Google for two reasons. First, it’ll allow Firebase to “dramatically scale.” Second, the two companies’ products and missions are “highly complementary.”

“We’re proud of what we’ve built over the last three years, but we’ve only scratched the surface of the opportunity ahead of us,” he writes in a blog post announcing the news. “With Google’s engineering talent, resources, and technical infrastructure, we’ll be able to do much more, much faster.”

Joining with Google, he says, will allow their developers to gain access to a powerful cloud infrastructure suite, while simultaneously offering Google clients the ability to rapidly develop apps.

“Together we’ll deliver a complete platform for mobile and web apps,” Tamplin promises.

But what’s in it for Google?

“Google understands the importance of cloud based services as the platform evolves and gains momentum. With Google’s well established client base, I think they are well positioned to introduce new and innovative cloud services. Firebase seems like a smart option in the fragmented mobile space, we’ll have to wait and see if the platform is adopted at scale by developers,” says Jason Eisert, President, Sectorlink LLC.

In its own announcement, Google noted that although mobile is one of the fastest-growing app development categories, many developers still find it too difficult.

“Firebase makes it easy to build applications that work offline and has full-featured libraries for all major web and mobile platforms, including Android and iOS,” wrote the king of search engines. “By combining Firebase with Google Cloud Platform, we’ll be able to build the best end-to-end platform for mobile application development.”

Essentially, Firebase could make mobile developers’ lives much easier, especially if they’re working on real-time apps like chat applications or collaboration tools. Typically, these apps would need to run a code that could communicate with a web server, which in turn would reach back to a database server. Firebase basically cuts out the middleman, allowing apps to communicate directly with a database. It eliminates the complex code that goes back and forth between the two servers.

Though each company has certainly made serious claims about the consequences of this deal, developers will just have to wait until the Google Cloud Platform Live on November 4 to see a demonstration of the new features.