HN Explorer

Google just killed the Firebase stripe extension – zero warning

49 points by justasking7000 ↗ HN
Why do they keep doing this?

I noticed users of my product (https://clonedub.com) were complaining that they couldn't upgrade plans. I also noticed there were no new subscriptions all day which was unusual.

So I log into firebase to figure out what's wrong.

Lo and behold it reads "Firebase no longer supports stripe extension. This has been moved to invertase".

The only mention of this is here: https://github.com/invertase/stripe-firebase-extensions/issues/542

Checking this out further I realised it was a barely supported open source alternative that didnt even work.

What a joke?!!

I genuinely don't understand why they have such contempt for businesses on their platforms.

Why do they keep doing this?!!!

18 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 53.3 ms ] thread
kwerk
Weirdly it’s still listed on their extensions library: https://extensions.dev/extensions/stripe/firestore-stripe-pa...

And I’m able to add it to my firebase project. Looks like it hasn’t propagated.

justasking7000
Yeah I would share screenshots if I could. Once you add it gives a warning "extension needs to be updated", and that's where it says the deprecation stuff.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
orbz
Based on what I see in the repo in question[1] this was not being maintained and the firebase team coordinating with another group to take it over.

[1]: https://github.com/invertase/stripe-firebase-extensions/issu...

justasking7000
This was listed on the firebase platform. It's a critical feature. You can't make changes like this, especially downgrading this way, without giving a huge warning.

The invertase library doesn't work.

orbz
The original extension was provided by stripe. I think it’s nice that the firebase team helped to coordinate moving it to a group that’ll actually maintain it.
justasking7000
I'm sorry that just isnt enough. I'm talking about critical payments stuff within the app.

You're telling me this was the best route for 10k+ apps that are dependent on this for processing payments.

Literally zero warning.

rstupek
You are assuming the installs number correlates with actual users which it likely doesn't. As several people have pointed out this isn't a google maintained extension. If something is this critical to your business it's on you to make sure it works for you.
justasking7000
It was already working. The extension had been functioning for months already.

My entire point is that if you're a huge organisation like google. And if you offer a critical feature that users then integrate deeply into their product.

This least you could do with your enormous wealth is send a note out giving a heads up about this damaging change.

What's so hard to understand here?

rstupek
You're misrepresenting that it's google's feature which you were using when it clearly states its from Stripe.
imanrahmati
(Firebaser here) What damaging change?

- You can continue to use the old extension (you won't get updates by Stripe nor Invertase and in the future Stripe may introduce breaking changes)

- You can clone the open source repo and maintain it yourself

- Or you can install the Invertase extension with the same exact config and you'll continue to have maintenance and upgrades.

We expect in a 3rd party platform these things happen (out of our control) so we've prepared multiple routes for you.

kobalsky
Google has been a handful this month. They changed the firebase SMS authentication from 10000 auths free per month to 10 per day. Apparently they forgot to send an email announcing the change so they have posponed the change until October, they have sent an email this time.
ipaddr
Another reminder that building anything on/in google's ecosystem is the biggest medium term risk you face.
endisneigh
Doesn’t look like Google even owned this to begin with, you should blame stripe, but don’t worry there are plenty of other things to blame google about
okokwhatever
This is just a reminder of: build your own core features not relying into third party libs/tools. Sad but true.
imanrahmati
Firebaser here:

- Sorry your payments has stopped working but it has nothing to do with an extension being deprecated or not. Extensions are copied and deployed into your own projects so new versions or deprecations won't affect running applications (that's the beauty of Extensions). Also happy to help with your issue if you file a bug.

- Stripe extension is not owned by Firebase/Google. We own the platform, but the publishers own the extension. It's like blaming Apple/Google for Twitter renaming their app to X.

- Stripe extension is not killed nor deprecated. Invertase was trusted by Stripe to do a better job of evolving the extension so now they own the extension end-to-end. We at Firebase helped this collab happen if anything.

- Even if an extension were to be deprecated, we've made sure they're all open source and you can fork off the latest version and develop future versions yourself. With a 3P platform there's always this risk and we made sure there's a break-glass solution for our devs.