The description of Cloud Functions on Google Cloud indicates an event-driven serverless compute platform. What this means is that functions are triggered either by HTTP endpoints or via a background service (for example, Google Cloud Storage or Cloud Pub/Sub and other sources within Google Cloud). Operationally, Cloud Functions are single-use pieces of code that are quick to deploy and provide the glue between multiple services. The exciting aspect of Cloud Functions is that they can be stitched together quite easily in the same way a traditional application would be. It is entirely feasible to create a couple of HTTP endpoint functions that link through to a Cloud Pub/Sub backend, and by keeping your service simple, the build can quickly complete.
While the default setting for functions is public, authentication can be enabled for features to...