Cloud Functions

Google Cloud Functions Overview

Google Cloud Functions is a serverless execution environment that allows you to run your code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. You simply write and deploy your code — Google handles the rest, including infrastructure, scaling, and availability.

🚀 Key Concepts

• Event-Driven: Trigger functions via events from services like Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Firestore, Firebase, or HTTP requests.
• Serverless: No need to manage servers. Google takes care of the OS and runtime.
• Scalable: Functions automatically scale up/down based on demand.
• Pay-As-You-Go: You only pay for what you use — no idle time billing.
• Stateless: Each function call is isolated. Use Cloud Storage or Firestore for persistent data.
• Isolated Execution: Each function runs in its own secure environment.

🛠️ Features

• Multi-language Support: Write functions in Node.js, Python, Go, Java, .NET, or use Docker-based custom runtimes.
• HTTP Triggers: Create APIs or webhooks using standard HTTP requests.
• Background Triggers: React to events from other Google Cloud services.
• CloudEvent Functions: .NET support using the CloudEvents spec for event data.
• Integrated with Google Cloud: Deep integration with services like Pub/Sub, Firestore, and Cloud Storage.
• Automatic Scaling: Scales with traffic load automatically.
• Resource Configuration: Set memory, CPU, and timeout per function.
• Monitoring & Logging: Built-in integration with Cloud Logging and Monitoring.

⚡ Second Generation Enhancements

• Based on Cloud Run & Eventarc
• Multi-event triggers
• Cloud Storage volume mounts
• Traffic splitting
• Timeouts up to 60 minutes
• Up to 32 GiB of memory and GPU support (in select regions)

💡 Use Cases

• Real-time Data Processing: Handle Cloud Storage uploads, Pub/Sub messages, IoT data.
• Webhooks & Integrations: Respond to external events or trigger workflows.
• API Backends: Build lightweight APIs for mobile/web apps.
• Firebase Events: React to auth, Firestore, or analytics changes.
• Automation: Cleanup, notifications, log processing, etc.
• IoT Backends: Scalable processing for telemetry and sensor data.
• Media Processing: Resize images, transcode videos.
• Data Validation: Sanitize or transform data on the fly.

💰 Pricing

You’re charged for:

• Invocations: Per call after the free tier
• Compute Time:
  • 1st Gen: GHz-seconds
  • 2nd Gen: vCPU-seconds
• Memory Usage: GB-seconds
• Networking:
  • Inbound: Free
  • Internal (same region): Free
  • Outbound: Billed after free tier
• GPU (2nd Gen only): Charged per GPU-second

👉 Use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator for estimates.

🆚 1st vs 2nd Gen Comparison

✅ Summary

Google Cloud Functions offers a powerful, serverless platform for running event-driven code at scale. It’s ideal for modern cloud-native development and integrates deeply with the Google Cloud and Firebase ecosystem.