I was a new employee at Google when we started talking to Firebase. The founders are super smart and get stuff done.

However, I remember saying to the VP who was leading the acquisition, “shouldn’t we decide what market we want to be in, then evaluate if we should build, buy, or partner?”

He said “no, we should buy it first then figure out what to do”.

I’m not surprised Firebase feels like it’s bolted on. They never really knew what they wanted to do with it. That was true then and it’s true now.