Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielhooper | Hacker News Reader

Knowing Google's reputation with abandoning developer tools and services, can anyone offer suggestions as to possible alternatives? Or counterpoints as to why I shouldn't fear this service degrading over the next year or two? We're currently using Fabric and Crashlytics for our iOS app where I work and this news has prompted us to research alternatives.

View on HN

> We're currently using Fabric and Crashlytics for our iOS app where I work and this news has prompted us to research alternatives.

I spent the last few months working on getting iOS Support going in Sentry (sentry.io). Would love to hear feedback. Not only do we provide a hosted solution but it's also 100% Open Source which should give you the confidence that it will continue working for you no matter what happens.

Bravo on Sentry - it's a terrific platform. I'm especially fond of the breadcrumbs, they're a great feature.

Thanks so much. It's always great to hear when people enjoy what we're doing :)

Love it as well and I am recommending it to everyone I know who's shipping iOS apps

Indeed. I was about to write and suggest sentry for crash reporting plus extra features. I'm starting to use breadcrumbs now to test and see how they can be useful.

From the article

> [...] we expect that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase [...]

They will be integrating Crashlytics into their core developer offering, Firebase. Looks like if you are just using Fabric's Crashlytics service you will be ok. But there is more room to worry if you are using some of Fabric's other tools.

Additionally, Firebase was an independent company bought by Google back in 2014 [1]. There was some teeth-gnashing and worry at the time that Firebase may be killed off, but it has only grown - in some ways by leaps and bounds - since then. It even had a prominent position at Google I/O 2016. [2]

We plan to stick with Crashlytics at my company.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/google-acquires-firebase-t...

[2] https://scotch.io/bar-talk/a-look-at-the-new-firebase-a-powe...

Having a popular developer tool that is already integrated with a lot of apps in both iOS and Android is valuable strategic asset for Google. Analytics and ads go hand in hand and as tracking cross-app behavior is hard, and having a library that is installed in many apps makes it easier.

I'm pretty sure that this was the strategic thinking when started to invest to app developer tools (Crashlytics, Fabric, Digits, MoPub). It's interesting to speculate why they are selling Fabric, is their business model focus moving away from mobile ads?

It's definitly interesting to see them move. Google already has Google Analytics/Firebase Analytics which pretty much every app developer integrates given their generous free tier so the extra data seems to be diminishing returns for Google. Seems to be more of a loss for Twitter than Google's gain given now they won't have a GA like equivalent.

I don't think Fabric was ever used for Twitter ad targeting just by reading their TOS unlike the Google/FB world and their analytics products but I could be wrong. Seems like a case where Twitter didn't realize the full potential of Crashlytics and Answers.

I made a poll in my circles and a surprisingly few iOS developers use Google Analytics. Whereas Crashlytics is used by 70%, Hockey App by the rest.

Can you please some give examples to developer tools and services Google abandoned that frustrated people? I can't seem to recall any but Google Code Project Hosting and Code Search.

I'm not really aware of what dev tools Google killed besides code/code search, but I would hope that as they get more serious about Google Cloud they will get better about not pissing off developers unnecessarily.

I would say don't fear for now. Google is pouring a lot of money there and want to win developers hearts. They have GA on web, to some extend, now want to grab your mobile and web data. I see it highly unlikely that Firebase will decelerate.

As an alternative, suggesting Countly (open source) - http://github.com/countly/countly-server - with crash reporting, push notifications and analytics.

Check out Apteligent, better crash reporting as well as performance data, user behavior and business impact. As a bonus your data doesnt go into Twitter or Google's ad networks and it's COPPA compliant.

I heard great things about Apteligent, especially from larger apps and teams. Was Twitter using the data from Crashlytics for ads? I am not sure if there's a clear answer, but they are an ad company at the end of the day.

Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Raygun (https://raygun.com).

Raygun provides Crash Reporting & Real User Monitoring. Across both mobile, backend and desktop (and all mobile, including Xamarin stacks). Love to have you check it out.

We've been picking up a bunch of customers who have been getting nervous with Twitter being in a bad shape and worrying about Fabric previously.

HockeyApp is great. Owned by Microsoft, who has doubled down on mobile tools with Xamarin. For beta distriubtion, HockeyApp is a superior product. And it has an API (so you can, say, auto register iOS devices). Fabric is just more known and considered cooler (they do have nice CSS transitions :).

You could try AppDynamics mobile RUM product. https://www.appdynamics.com/product/mobile-real-user-monitor... Disclosure : I work there

What have they abandoned?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com