Google Firebase[]
Firebase is a mobile and web application development platform. Firebase is made up of complementary features that developers can mix-and-match to fit their needs. The team is based in San Francisco and Mountain View, California. The company was founded in 2011 by Andrew Lee and James Tamplin. Firebase's initial product was a realtime database, which provides an API that allows developers to store and sync data across multiple clients. Over time, it has expanded its product line to become a full suite for app development. The company was acquired by Google in October 2014 and a significant number of new features were featured in May 2016 at Google I/O.
About Google Firebase[]
Firebase evolved from Envolve, a prior startup founded by Tamplin and Lee in 2011. Envolve provided developers an API that enables the integration of online chat functionality into their websites. After releasing the chat service, Tamplin and Lee found that the service was being used to pass application data that wasn't chat messages. Developers were using Envolve to sync application data such as game state in realtime across their users. Tamplin and Lee decided to separate the chat system and the real-time architecture that powered it, founding Firebase as a separate company in April 2012.
Firebase raised $1.4 million in seed funding in May 2012 from Flybridge Capital Partners, Greylock Partners, NEA and others. The company further raised $5.6 million in Series A funding from Union Square Ventures and Flybridge Capital Partners in June 2013. On October 21, 2014, Firebase announced it had been acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. On October 13, 2015, Google acquired Divshot to merge it with the Firebase team, for an undisclosed amount. Before the acquisition, Divshot had raised $1.18 million in two rounds of funding, according to TechCrunch. Since the acquisition, Firebase has grown inside Google and expanded their services to become a unified platform for mobile developers. Firebase now integrates with various other Google services to offer broader products and scale for developers. The vision of Firebase stays the same and aim to help developers build better apps and grow successful businesses.
On January 18, 2017, Google announced that it signed an agreement to acquire Fabric and Crashlytics from Twitter, and that those services would join the Firebase team.