April 2024 Summaries

At Cloud Next ’24, Firebase highlighted new tools and sessions focused on building AI-enabled mobile and web applications with Google Cloud. Key product updates included Firestore vector search support and a Vector Search extension that can automatically create embeddings from document writes, enabling semantic search, recommendations, and chatbot experiences using supported SDKs and frameworks such as LangChain and LlamaIndex. Firebase also announced private-preview Vertex AI SDKs for Kotlin, Swift, Dart, and JavaScript, allowing client applications to access Gemini models with mobile-focused security and Firebase integrations, while Gemini in Firebase entered public preview to provide developers with assistance for Firebase questions, code generation, and troubleshooting. Recorded sessions cover building applications with Flutter, Firebase, and Gemini, using Firebase backend services to accelerate mobile development, and applying generative AI to improve productivity across the software development lifecycle.

Google Cloud Next ’24, held April 9–11 in Las Vegas, will introduce Dev Connect, a developer-focused program bringing Firebase together with Google Cloud and communities including Android, Flutter, Kaggle, and Angular. The event will feature Firebase sessions on generative AI, Gemini, Vertex AI, Firestore, Flutter, enterprise applications, mobile development, and scaling workloads, alongside lightning talks covering topics such as vector search, AI integration, privacy, and gamification. Attendees can also participate in hands-on workshops, including Firebase and Flutter development with Gemini, network with Google teams and other developers at the Innovators Hive and Community Hub, attend the developer keynote, and join demos, quizzes, badges, social events, and the Next ’24 Party. The program aims to show how Firebase and Google Cloud can be used together to build scalable AI-enabled applications while offering opportunities to learn, experiment, and connect with developer communities.