Firebase Storage very slow compared to Firebase Hosting

Question

Anyone know why firebase storage would be so ridiculously slow compared to firebase hosting?

Results

• Time to download image of firebase hosting: 16ms
• Time to download same image from firebase storage: 2.23s (2.22s is TTFB)
• Time to download same image from firebase storage (Asia Pacific Region): 1.72s (1.70s is TTFB)
• (File size: 22.7kb / jpeg / firebase storage has read open to everyone)

This is repeated over and over in tests. Is there any way to speed this up to a decent time, or is firebase storage unusable for small files (images/thumbs)?

For Comparison

• S3 North Cal - approximately 500ms
• S3 Asia Pacific - Approximately 30ms
• Cloudinary - Approximately 20ms

Extra info:

• I am based in Australia.
• Exact same files. Always images under 100kb.
• The slow down is always in the TTFB according to dev tools.
• Hosting URL: https://.firebaseapp.com/images/thumb.jpg
• Storage URL: https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/.appspot.com/o/thumb.jpg?alt=media&token=

Answer 1

I found the solution.

If you have your files already uploaded to storage go to: https://console.cloud.google.com/storage/browser?project=your_project > pick your bucket > select all interesting files and click Make public (or something similar - I'm not english native).

To have all new uploaded files public by default you need to install Google cloud SDK (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/) and from your command line use the following command for your bucket:

gsutil defacl set public-read gs://your_bucket

After that all my current and new images are available here storage.googleapis.com/my_project.appspot.com/img/image_name.jpg and downloading time is definitely shorter.