It took me some time to understand your cynicism. I personally find it easier to believe that there is a spark of joy in the minds of those working on this, and that they are not only in it for milking our code to train an AI overlord to accomplish, what exactly?

We can certainly agree that to "navigate an endless sea of complexity" in getting an app "from zero to production" is no fun. Firebase is in the business of making this easier, and IDX is probably, as you might imply, an on-ramp to use Firebase. I don't see what is wrong with that.

I also fail to see why IDX would be free. I guess it will run in the Google Cloud, and provide their developers with some hard earned income.

All in all I'm still positive in hoping that there will be a real solution for a real problem :)