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From: Arno Welzel <usenet@arnowelzel.de>
Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android
Subject: Re: Why do so many people confuse Google's Firebase (cloud API) with
 Google Services Google Firebase App Indexing (search results)?
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2024 02:58:16 +0200
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Andrew, 2024-06-22 20:48:

> Why do so many people (including myself, at first) confuse Google's
> Firebase (cloud API) with Google Services Google Firebase App Indexing
> (search results)?
> 
> Firebase (cloud related):
>  <https://firebase.google.com/firebase-and-gcp>
>  "Firebase and Google Cloud share three products: Cloud Firestore, 
>   Cloud Functions, and Cloud Storage. These are the same products
>   that exist in Google Cloud, simply exposed for client-side 
>   developers via Firebase. You can access the same data from the 
>   server SDKs (Google Cloud) and the client SDKs (Firebase), 
>   so your frontend and backend teams can work in concert."

Firebase App Indexing was part of Firebase and not a separate product:

<https://firebase.google.com/docs/app-indexing?hl=en>

Also note, quote:

"Firebase App Indexing is no longer the recommended way of indexing
content for display as suggested results in Google Search App. This page
points to other useful Google developer products."

[...]
> In addition, while the extremely private information stored on your device
> for Firebase App Indexing isn't directly uploaded to the Internet, Google
> clearly says they will (and do) upload statistics which we have no idea
> what they are (nor how frequently they're uploaded, nor to whom) - so
> another question is what happens to that extremely private data that is
> stored in the Firebase App Index on the cellphone (other than it's included
> in search results, presumably those run on the phone's data itself).

If you don't trust Google, don't use their products!

> I barely know what Firebase (cloud) and Firebase App Indexing (search) do;
> but it's really sad if I know it better than anyone else - hence - I'm
> asking everyone else to pitch in so that we can tell, at a glance, which
> apps use Firebase App Indexing so that we can avoid them, on sight.

Firebase in general is a framework by Google to build apps which use
additional services for authentication, communication and storage:

<https://firebase.google.com/docs/projects/learn-more?hl=en>

For developers this makes a lot a things easier, since you can use the
Firebase infrastructure instead of implementing
client-server-communication etc. on your own.

But again: if you don't trust Google, don't use their products!

-- 
Arno Welzel
https://arnowelzel.de