[alanlamm]

Thank you for the answer. I have to admit it doesn't quite sway me, for reasons such as those below, but thank you.

e.g. yes I realise they are different search problems, but I'd presume that Google is nonetheless well-equipped to handle the document db one. the only apps I can imagine that couldn't benefit from a search box are games - anything content-focused or ecommerce focused needs one, and the majority of utilities benefit too (yes I can do chat without search, but it certainly benefits from being able to search through chats) - any examples? yes I realize having to do Backend/iOS/Android/Web is hard (as it is for everybody else), but with on device cases at least the db is smaller. Im sure you do have big users, I didn't mean to imply otherwise, but with my admittedly very limited knowledge I'd still wager that a majority do not see uptime and scalability as the most urgent improvements, but rather those we are discussing. In our case, give us just 2 9s of uptime, and give us the above queries and searches even if 2x as slow and expensive as you'd like them to be, and limited to a db the size of an average relational db, and that would beat the extra 3 9s of uptime and the super scalability any day. Not least because, I don't mean to be rude here, just candid, but if we were ever to reach a point where we needed that massive scale and uptime, I'm not sure I'd be keen to trust Google with user data.

To be clear - I like several things about Firebase/Firestore, which is why we use it and why I'm insisting on badgering you here. I just wish I could be completely comfortable with my choice rather than wondering every day if I shouldn't just use something else.