{"slug": "the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response", "title": "The Pulse: Firebase’s global outage & poor response", "summary": "Google's Firebase iOS SDK crashed after a backend change, taking down all apps that used Firebase analytics for 2 to 6 hours, and Google did not update its status page or publish a postmortem. Separately, OpenAI is opening its platform so ChatGPT spend can be allocated to open models and AI offerings from 16 partners, while Vercel's AI gateway shows 60% of model spend going to open weight models and OpenRouter shows open models used more than closed ones.", "body_md": "*The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups.*\n\nToday, we cover:\n\n1. **Firebase: global outage & poor handling by Google.** The Firebase iOS SDK crashed after a backend change, crashing all apps which used Firebase analytics for 2-6 hours. Google did not update the status page or offer any postmortem, which is a head-scratcher from a company known for standout incident management practices.\n2. **OpenAI’s platform play from AWS playbook?** OpenAI is becoming a platform where it’s possible to allocate ChatGPT spend on open models and AI offerings from among 16 partners, not just OpenAI models. It’s fair to ask if Anthropic will consider a similar platform play.\n3. **More data on companies moving to open models.** Vercel’s AI gateway shows 60% of model spend goes to open weight models, and OpenRouter also shows open models are being more used than closed ones.\n4. **Why CTOs and VPEs are quitting en masse: another take.** What if it’s not “founder mode”, but about people who love building software, feeling like they can do it solo (or with a small team) with AI tools?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response", "canonical_source": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage", "published_at": "2026-10-01 16:43:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-01 16:49:56.241383+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-infrastructure", "large-language-models", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Google", "Firebase", "OpenAI", "ChatGPT", "Anthropic", "Vercel", "OpenRouter"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage-poor-response.jsonld"}}