Ever since Google LLC bought the Firebase mobile app database service in 2014, it has been adding more capabilities to make it a full-fledged development platform for creating mobile and web apps that can then run on, for example, Google’s cloud computing platform.

Today, it’s announcing new capabilities aimed at making Firebase more useful not just for a few guys in a garage but for large makers of popular apps, such as current Firebase customers Box Inc., Pandora Inc. and The New York Times.

Francis Ma, head of product for Firebase, said in an interview that the company’s goal is to provide a “holistic” platform to help mobile developers solve a lot of their problems across the lifecycle of their app, including tracking how it’s performing and managing user growth and engagement.

For one, Google’s adding in-app messaging (pictured) to Firebase, allowing companies to reach people using an app. The idea is to enable app makers to reach their most valuable users and keep them loyal by sending contextual information, such as a suggestion to put items into a shopping cart or an offer of a discount on a product or service, while they’re using the app.

Before, a developer would have to build out the different connections to send a message, target users and finally render the message on the screen. “A lot of times users get a lot of messages” in apps that aren’t that relevant, Ma said, so one goal here is to make it easier to target particular users using Google Analytics, which is integrated into Firebase.

The second major addition announced today is new integrations between Crashlytics, its crash and error reporting tool, with other cloud services. For one, data from Crashlytics can be exported from Firebase to BigQuery, Google’s enterprise data warehouse for analysis of huge data sets.

There’s also a new integration with Jira Software, the popular Atlassian Corp. plc tool for software project management and bug tracking, to create issues on crashes reported in Firebase. That will roll out in coming weeks.

Google is also announcing a few other new features, such as better reporting on the console for cloud messaging used to reach app users when they’re not currently in the app and an updated project overview page in the console to provide a single view into the health of an app.

“We started out with a very strong focus on startups,” Ma said. “Now, we’ve seen where the startups are getting more sophisticated and also more sophisticated apps are getting interested in the platform.”

Firebase, which Google said recently is used by 1.2 million apps, is a key component of Google’s effort to gain on cloud computing rivals Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which Google’s cloud still trails far behind. In enabling developers to create apps and web applications more quickly, Google can then offer to host and run them on its cloud.

The focus on appealing to more enterprise app developers is a longstanding goal. Urs Hölzle, a Google senior vice president who heads Google infrastructure, vowed two years ago that “Firebase will be an essential tool to build enterprise mobile apps.”

Images: Google