Gergely Orosz · 1 min read · Product Execution
The Pulse: Firebase’s global outage & poor response
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This edition of The Pulse covers Firebase's major iOS SDK outage caused by a backend change that crashed apps for 2-6 hours, alongside broader trends in AI platform strategies. Google's poor incident response—lacking status page updates or a postmortem—stood out as a significant failure. The issue is contextualized alongside OpenAI's expanding platform play and growing adoption of open-source AI models.
Key Takeaways
- Firebase's iOS SDK crashed due to a backend change, causing widespread app outages lasting 2-6 hours, with Google failing to update its status page or provide a postmortem
- OpenAI is evolving into a broader platform, allowing users to allocate spend across 16 partners including open models—drawing comparisons to AWS's platform strategy
- Open-weight models are gaining significant traction, with Vercel's AI gateway showing 60% of model spend going to open models and OpenRouter reporting similar trends
- A new hypothesis suggests the wave of CTOs and VPEs quitting may be driven by technical leaders who feel empowered to build independently using AI tools rather than managing large teams
- Google's handling of the Firebase outage is particularly surprising given the company's historically strong incident management reputation
Excerpt
The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Today, we cover: Firebase: global outage & poor handling by Google. The Firebase iOS SDK crashed after a backend change, crashing all apps which used Firebase analytics for 2-6 hours. Google did not update the status page or offer any postmortem, which is a head-scratcher from a company known for standout incident management practices. OpenAI’s platform play from AWS playbook? OpenAI is becoming a platform where it’s possible to allocate ChatGPT spend on open models and AI offerings from among 16 partners, not just OpenAI…