Introduction
According to google’s documentation cloud functions are Google Cloud’s event-driven serverless compute platform. Run your code locally or in the cloud without having to provision servers. Go from code to deploy with continuous delivery and monitoring tools. Cloud Functions scales up or down, so you pay only for compute resources you use. Easily create end-to-end complex development scenarios by connecting with existing Google Cloud or third-party services.
Firebase and google cloud functions seem to be two different things but both do the same job which is computing products serverless and lets you deploy code that responds to HTTP requests and events from other Google products in your project.
But both of those provide their service to different platforms;
Google cloud platform: Google cloud is a suite of products that support the development of massively scalable cloud infrastructures.
Firebase: is a mobile and web application development platform that’s implemented by APIs and services within a Google cloud platform
What is serverless computing?
Providing backend services on an as-used basis allowing the users to write and deploy code without worrying about the infrastructure. Companies that gets backend services from a serverless vendor don’t have to pay a fixed amount for the bandwidth or number of servers as the services auto scale and even though it is called serverless they still use servers, but the user doesn’t need to be aware of them.
Google cloud platform and firebase.
Google functions allow to run snippets of code in google infrastructure in response to events. Firebase which triggers Google cloud functions based on the events in firebase. Firebase makes Google cloud platform more user-friendly to mobile and web applications. And existing Google cloud platform projects can be configured to add firebase services.
Competitors for google cloud platforms as of now are
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon AWS
Benefits
Firebase functions
- Firebase SDK to configure functions through code
- Integrated with Firebase console and CLI
- Same triggers as google cloud functions
Google cloud functions
- Through a unified API they handle any type of event source
- Additional commands to work with deployed functions
- Functions configuration on command line interface during deployment
And more.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the difference between Google cloud functions and Firebase functions is that Firebase functions are built on top of Google cloud functions and we use Firebase functions in web and mobile applications and we use Google cloud functions for massively scalable infrastructures.
Further reading
https://www.toptal.com/google/firebase-serverless-mobile-and-web-apps