Maybe things have changed since I applied - but I have not talked to a single sales person and only communicated via email with the google cloud for startups team. The process was so quick and painless that I at some point felt like I was being scammed and had to make sure I was not going to end up with a huge bill after they pulled the rug out from under me.

> I like Firebase, but the moment the utility runs out we're heading back to AWS.

Just from a technical perspective I'd advise to avoid the firebase databases like the plague.

It's not too bad if you use the firebase store. But yeah using the firebase realtime db for anything that requires relationships/indexing can be kinda cumbersome.

> It's not too bad if you use the firebase store

I've built a prototype on top of it and it's fairly rudimentary but you can make it work. My biggest concern is that there are no case studies I can find of people using it past the prototype stage and how the pricing/scalability works out at that point.

We've spent a lot of time working around the limitations of FireStore, but it does work reliably. Pricing is VERY hard to extrapolate from early use; all it takes is one feature request and your assumptions are blown.

Love to hear from anyone who has gone beyond the prototype phase.

Why's that? I haven't looked into it but thought I might someday.