He who is rickman said on Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:32:39 -0500:

Where's the value YOU added?

Pointing out your speculation which is *not* fact.

Fair enough.

Do you know how to tell, definitively, if any given phone is running this
compromised service?

I don't see it running when I look using these instructions:
https://www.howtogeek.com/258300/how-to-access-androids-list-of-running-apps-in-6.0-marshmallow-and-above/

However, it could be running *inside* an app that linked to the API.

When I check it with adb, I get the following error:
$ adb shell service list
error: device not found

I can check with "ps" though:
$ ps | grep -i service
Returns about a dozen services such as:
org.simalliance.openmobileapi.service:remote
samsung.clipboardsaveservice
com.sec.android.inputmethod:ACService
etc.
But:
$ ps | grep -i firebase
Returns nothing

At this point, I see no evidence (yet anyway) of firebase services on my
Android 4.3 phone. Do you see evidence of it running on yours?