---
title: 'The Pulse: Firebase’s global outage & poor response'
link: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-firebases-global-outage
source: newsletter-pragmaticengineer-com
published: 2026-10-01T16:43:19Z
updated: 2026-10-01T16:43:19Z
first_seen: 2026-10-01T19:33:44.897168732Z
authors:
- Gergely Orosz
summary: 'Also: OpenAI’s platform play that has similarities to AWS, more data on companies moving to open models, and more'
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*The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups.*

Today, we cover:

1. **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.

2. **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.

3. **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.

4. **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?