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Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

Firebase is a really attractive service to quickly and easily bring powerful features to any app, but I can't help it.. I feel like I'd be including yet another way for Google to track people. Therefore I avoid any app with Firebase in them, no matter how cool they are. Am I overly suspicious here?

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Yeah I like firebase for sure. At the same time I was hoping this was all from scratch. Within the past few years it’s really getting discouraging knowing everything is tracked and ready to lock you in w dependency. Google search and some other changes they have made recently feel insulting almost

Snapdrop.net[0] is a similar PWA that specifically avoids using Firebase (or any db). I saw it on here some time ago, but don't recall if it was a Show HN.

[0]: https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop

Edit: just seen this was mentioned earlier down thread.

I just avoid it because I don't want to have to find a new app when Google shuts Firebase down.

Not really. You shouldn't have to audit network traffic and de-compile an app before you can trust it.

yes, you are. Google has no incentive to spy on Firebase projects because any project using firebase could contain sensitive data and any company that believed Google would spy on the data would not use them so Google would lose market. The same is true for AWS and Azure

But since Google knows that companies believe that they won't spy on them for the reasons you've outlined, then so long as they're real cautious about it...

Wait, are market incentives really the basis for hoping that Google doesn't spy on Firebase data?

I would have guessed because they'd be liable for breach of contract or GDPR or whatever.

What does Google say about its analytics applied to its Firebase customers?

yes

the same tired battle lines have been baked into tech for 12 years now, and it exhausts me to read the Google ones these days

it's sad that this is a source of innovation, but simply switching from Apple "infrastructure" and languages has been a massive step change in my productivity.

If you're really unsure, audit network traffic and the code

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