Re: Why do so many people confuse Google's Firebase (cloud API) with Google Services Google Firebase App Indexing (search results)?

Arno Welzel wrote on Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:41:10 +0200 :

The question I asked is a very difficult question to answer.

 
No, it's quite simple:
 
"Firebase" is a mostly cloud based platform with a number of services
provided by Google: messaging, storage, usage analytics, indexing and so on.
 
"Firebase App Indexing" is one single feature of that and not a separate
product.

Thanks again for hazarding a guess as I know how rough Usenet is to people
who make guesses - rightly or wrongly so - where I'm only trying to nail
down what the difference is between what Google calls
a. Firebase App Indexing (on-device search data + uploaded statistics)
b. Firebase (where Firebase is only the back end to Google Cloud)

I realize you know a lot about Android but I'm also rather intelligent, so
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you when you suggested the "back
end" of the "front and back" end of the Firebase (cloud) APIs was "Firebase
App Indexing".

If your assumption is correct, then Firebase App Indexing (search) is just
the back end of the cloud - but that's not what it is as far as I can tell.

The back end of Google Cloud services is Google Firebase (cloud) APIs.
Not Google Firebase App Indexing (as far as I can tell anyway).

Hence, as far as I can tell (bearing in mind I've searched for years this
topic), is they're COMPLETELY SEPARATE APIs which Google gave the same name
to.

Hence, I believe it's not as simple as you made it to be, but I do not
fault you as I said.... this is a hard question to answer... mainly because
Google doesn't make it easy to figure out what the differences are.

And using F-Droid you can get many apps as well. Of course if you *must*
use a smartphone as a second authentication factor for your bank account
or similar applications, you may just get a cheap device which is only
used for that purpose and nothing else.

I look at privacy from every angle feasible, where 2FA/MFV is anathema.

Suffice to say I have years of experience with this, and still, to this
day, I never use 2FA/MFV, and I have many instances where I've worked with
developers (such as Marcel Bokhorst (M66B) for FairEmail) and with K9 Mail,
developers to get the Thunderbird-like OAUTH2 to be used instead of
2FA/MFV, which I consider yet another privacy hole.

We won that battle after about 3 months of Google forcing everyone who was
weak into 2FV/MFV, which, at least to Google's credit, they allowed people
to back out of (as Apple *never* allows you to back out of 2FV/MFV).

Given my Samsung Galaxy A32-5G baseband is unrootable, I'm forced to use
some version of Android so I'm stuck using Google products de jure.

 
No, you can just buy a different device.

While I'm rather familiar with the concept of telling people if they don't
like living in the United States, they should just go back to where they
came from, that's an historic Germanic attitude that I don't harbor,
despite the fact I was born to a German-born father & mother in the USA.

I would rather simply try to understand the differences between these three
sets of API's from Google that developers can link into their apps.

1. GSF => APIs for apps to link into Google Backup, Play Store Services, 
          Contacts Sync, and Account Management (plus location services
          I think, which is why so many apps now require "precise location"
          even though they have no need for it - because Google made the
          option for location services w/o Wi-Fi removed from the API!)
2. GMS => APIs for Gmail, Chrome, Google+, Google Maps & Youtube.
3. Firebase => APIs for Cloud stuff + completely separate search stuff