Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is curious, my old analysis ( http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns ) gives an estimate of 70% for Firebase surviving another 5 years:

    R> firebase <- data.frame(Product="Firebase", Dead=FALSE, Started=Sys.Date(), Ended=NA, Type="program", Profit=TRUE, FLOSS=FALSE, Acquisition=TRUE, Social=FALSE, Days=1, AvgHits=NA, DeflatedHits=mean(google$DeflatedHits), AvgDeflatedHits=NA, EarlyGoogle=FALSE)
    R> conditionalProbability(firebase, 5*365.25)
    [1] 0.693911886

View on HN

Interesting analysis, but I suspect you're missing something critical - whether or not Google use the product internally. If other Google services start to adopt Firebase (or they're already using it) then surely the probability of it being killed off is greatly reduced. The analysis you've done works for standalone products, but I think it'll fall down for services.

This may not be any indication. A Firebase competitor named GoInstant was bought by Salesforce, used to build a few things internally at that company, and very recently shut down and the team integrated into the parent company. Any outsiders that built anything with GoInstant were basically out of luck. I have no idea how many users they had, and Firebase has greater visible traction, so that may factor in as well.

Thanks for posting this.

While I would have my concerns about going with Firebase after a Google acquisition, shutdown isn't one of them. They're clearly investing tons into the Google Cloud Platform, pouring resources into things like App Engine. Google also just seems to love competing with Facebook, which now owns Parse - the top alternative to Firebase.

Your analysis is probably worth more though ;-)

Not sure about 70% to another 5 yrs, you gave Google+ (personal) an 85%, I believe it to be much lower.

My guess for Firebase is 25%. Why? Because I don't see this making enough profit and social value is low. Just a guess though, then again I'm wrong a lot, so it should be interesting looking back on your stats (Bookmarked).

wow! lots of decimal points! must be legit.

Please note that I rounded it in my comment, of course I don't think the stuff after the decimal point matters... (The source code is there so in the future I remember how exactly I got 70%, and in the unlikely event anyone is that interested in the details.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com