Google launches Firebase Cloud Messaging for the web

Google is announcing today that it’s introducing web support for Firebase Cloud Messaging, a service that lets developers send push notifications for their applications to end users’ devices. This move provides greater choice to Firebase customers — until now, it was only possible to send push notifications through Android and iOS apps with Firebase Cloud Messaging (and before that, Google Cloud Messaging).

The web, including the mobile web, is more splintered across browsers than the world of native apps, which can go right on top of operating systems. Now Google is remedying this problem.

Now, thanks to a new JavaScript library, the service supports Chrome on desktop and mobile (version 50 and later), Firefox on desktop and mobile (version 44 and later), and Opera on mobile (version 37 and later), Pinar Ozlen, a software engineer at Google-owned Firebase, wrote in a blog post. The Edge browser for PCs running Windows 10 and the Samsung Browser will be supported in the future.

After implementing Firebase Cloud Messaging into the mobile web version of its AliExpress shopping app, Alibaba saw 178 percent higher conversion compared to people who use the mobile site but don’t have the notifications enabled, Ozlen wrote in the blog post.

Users must give consent to receive push notifications from websites before the notifications show up.

Public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers the competing Simple Notification Service (SNS).

Google acquired Firebase two years ago. Google rebranded Google Cloud Messaging to Firebase Cloud Messaging in May, in conjunction with the introduction of Firebase Analytics.

Documentation is here.