Google Firebase is a toolset to “build, improve, and grow your app”, and the tools it gives you cover a large portion of the services that developers would normally have to build themselves, but don’t really want to build, because they’d rather be focusing on the app experience itself. This includes analytics, authentication, databases, configuration, file storage, push messaging, and the list goes on. The services are hosted in the cloud and scale with little to no effort on the part of the developer. 

This is different than traditional app development, which typically involves writing both frontend and backend software. The frontend code just invokes API endpoints exposed by the backend, and the backend code actually does the work. However, with Firebase products, the traditional backend is bypassed, putting the work into the client. Administrative access to each of these products is provided by the Firebase console.