On May 25, a new piece of European data protection legislation came into force: the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
We know that GDPR compliance is at the top of many of your minds, so we've been working hard over the past few months to ensure that you have the resources you need.
We updated to new, GDPR-friendly terms that includes the Firebase Data Processing and Security Terms. We've also given you a way to specify a Data Processing Officer (DPO) or EU Representative in the Firebase console. If you've already added your project's DPO or EU Rep in the Google Cloud console, you don't need to do it again for Firebase.
It's not just about the GDPR either - we've certified many Firebase products under security standards such as ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 and SOC 1, 2 and 3.
For Google Analytics for Firebase users, we have a new guide on your data management options, new sharing settings within the Firebase console that lets you have more control over your data, and a new API for deleting data associated with an Analytics App Instance ID.
Finally, you may want to check out our Google I/O session on paving the way to using Firebase within your enterprise for more ideas on how to manage user data:
If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team—we can't offer legal advice, but we'll do what we can to help you out with any specific questions or technical concerns.
Our mission for Firebase is to help you build better apps and grow your
business, by providing tools that solve common problems throughout your app
development lifecycle. We manage your backend infrastructure, provide you with
the tools to improve the quality and stability of your app, and help you acquire
and engage users, so you can focus on building a fantastic user experience.
To date, over one million developers have used Firebase to build their
apps across iOS, Android and the web. It's both inspiring and humbling to hear
the many stories that all of you share with us. Take Doodle, for instance, a
company that helps you find the best date and time to meet with people. Doodle
recently used Firebase to redesign their app and increase retention and
engagement.
We're excited to be hosting the second annual Firebase Dev Summit here in
Amsterdam, where we get to meet many members of our developer community! We've
been working hard to improve Firebase, so that our products work seamlessly
together, and we have several exciting new updates to share today. We've
integrated Crashlytics into Firebase, enabled first-class A/B support and taken
our first step in bringing the power of Google's machine learning into Firebase
with a new product called Predictions. We've also made a few other
improvements, so let's dive in!
Bringing Crashlytics into Firebase
Since Fabric
joined Google, we've been working to bring the best of our platforms
together. Today we're announcing a big step in that journey: we're adding
Crashlytics to the Firebase Console for new and existing Firebase users.
Crashlytics is the best-in-class
crash reporter that helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues
that erode your app quality, in realtime. We'll be rolling out this update over
the next several weeks, but if you're eager to try it out sooner, you can visit
g.co/firebase/opt-in and get access
today.
We're also integrating Crashlytics with other parts of Firebase. You can now use
Crashlytics events to trigger Cloud Functions and power custom workflow
integrations. For example, you can automate a workflow to route issues in a
critical app flow - like your purchase path - to a particular developer or Slack
room, ensuring the proper escalations, reducing the time to resolution, and
increasing stability.
Redesigning the console
In addition to bringing Crashlytics to Firebase, collaborating with the Fabric
team has allowed us to make some exciting updates to the Firebase console that
will help you find key information about your app more easily and efficiently.
First of all, you're going to notice a new structure in the left-hand navigation
bar. We've clustered Firebase products into four main areas, based on the app
development lifecycle: Develop, Stability, Analytics, and Grow. All of the
products that you're used to seeing in the Firebase console are still there;
we've simply reorganized things to more accurately reflect the way your team
works.
We've also redesigned the first screen you see when you open a Firebase project
— what we call your Project Overview screen. We've heard from you that the
majority of the time, when you come to the console, you're looking for four main
statistics: daily active users, monthly active users, crash-free user rate, and
total crashes. We've taken those four key metrics and made them front-and-center
for any apps in the project. We've also added sparklines, so you can understand
how your app is trending over time.
Finally, we've overhauled the Analytics section of the console. You'll find a
new dashboard that is organized around the questions and tasks that you tackle
on a day-to-day basis. We've also added a Latest Release section that gives you
all the information you need about the stability and adoption of your latest app
release, so you can make quick decisions after a launch. Lastly, we've added
realtime cards to both of these sections, so you can have up-to-the-second
insight into your app data. Like Crashlytics, these changes are rolling out over
the next few weeks, but you can get access today by visiting g.co/firebase/opt-in.
Analytics dashboard, before and after
Improving the Cloud Messaging API
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) gives you an easy way to send notifications to
your users, either programmatically or through the Firebase Console. However,
sending cross-platform notifications with more complex functionality has been
difficult, sometimes requiring you to create multiple, separate messages.
Today, we're announcing a new RESTful, FCM HTTP v1 API that makes it safer and
easier to send messages to your cross-platform applications. The new FCM API
allows you to use platform-specific fields in a single notification. For
example, you might send a simple text notification to iOS, but a request with a
click_action to Android, all in one API call. To read more about the new FCM
API, visit our
documentation.
Announcing a new A/B testing framework
In addition to FCM, another powerful tool for driving user engagement and
retention is Remote Config. Up until now, running variant tests with either
Remote Config or FCM has been manual and quite some work. We've heard from many
of you that you want an easier way to test how different app variants or push
notification messages impact your key business metrics.
Today, we're launching the beta version of A/B testing, a new Firebase feature
that's integrated with Analytics, FCM and Remote Config. It's built on the
statistical engine and years of learning from Google Optimize, our free
website testing and personalization product, and makes it easy to design
experiments right from the Firebase console.
Setting up an A/B test is quick and simple. You can create an experiment with
Remote Config or FCM, define different variant values and population sizes to
test on, then set the experiment goal. From there, Firebase will take care of
the rest, automatically running the experiment then letting you know when a
winner towards your goal is determined with statistical significance. Learn more
and get
started with A/B testing here.
Introducing Firebase Predictions
Whether you're driving engagement, revenue, or a different business metric,
determining the right targeting can be difficult. Being proactive, instead of
reactive, is always better, but up until now, there's been no easy way to
anticipate what actions your users are likely to take. To help with this, we're
taking our first step in bringing the power of Google's machine learning to
Firebase with a new product called Firebase Predictions.
We've already started using machine learning in other parts of Google, to
enhance consumer products like Photos, Inbox, or the Assistant. Now, you can
harness Google's machine learning, using Firebase, to help you build great
products. Predictions automatically creates dynamic user groups based on
predicted behavior from your Analytics data and, out of the box, it will
generate four user groups:
Users who are predicted to churn in the next 7 days
Users who are predicted to stay engaged with your app
Users who are predicted to spend money
Users who are predicted to not spend money in the next 7 days
You can use these predictions for targeting with Remote Config and notifications
composer, giving you the ability to only show ads to users who are predicted to
not spend money in your app or send a notification to users who are predicted to
churn in the next 7 days.
You can also create predictions for any Analytics conversion event in your app. For example, if completing level 3
is an important milestone in your app, you can create a prediction for users who
are likely to not hit that milestone and then send them an in-app promotion
using Remote Config.
We're already hearing from partners that Predictions helps them drive growth in
their key business metrics. Halfbrick, a games developer known for popular
titles such as Fruit Ninja and Dan the Man, used Predictions and Remote Config
and boosted their 7-day retention rate by 20%! To learn more about Predictions,
as well as read the full Halfbrick story, visit our product page
here.
Looking to the future
While we're excited about the updates to Firebase that we've announced today, we
also know that there's a lot more work to be done. We are working hard to
prepare for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across Firebase and
we're committed to helping you succeed under it. Offering a data processing
agreement where appropriate is one important step we're taking to make sure that
Firebase works for you, no matter how large your business or where your users
are. We'll also be publishing tools and documentation to help developers ensure
they are compliant. You can check out our privacy FAQs at g.co/firebase/gdpr.
As we continue to grow and improve the platform, we'd love to have your input.
Join our Alpha program to help shape the future of the platform and stay on the cutting edge of Firebase.
If you weren't able to join us in person in Amsterdam, all of our sessions are
recorded and posted to our YouTube
channel. Thanks for being a part of our community and happy building!