Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

by.graffino.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 252 posts

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#51

Post by blihp »

dordoka wrote: post #25
hota_mazi wrote: post #17

> I received an email from Google telling me that my extension violated Facebook’s trademark What did you expect? Any service, not just Google, will shut down apps and extensions for similar reasons. This has nothing to do with > I just don’t think it is worth it to put any amount of effort to build something on a platform that turned out to be so unreliable.

I do agree that any service might honor the takedown request for the registered trademark infringement. But what the author refers to is completely another issue: the complete lack of support from Google. The extension author complied with the request. Tried to contact several times an only got canned responses. I guess Google doesn't care much about people that develop for their platform. At least that's what I got…

The problem is that the author used the wrong example to make that point. This issue was entirely on the developer and at this point in the web/mobile/app game I have to believe he really didn't want to understand what the issue was and was just trying to get some attention with that post.

Let's pretend Google actually had great developer support (remember: we're pretending here) which was staffed to whatever degree it 'should' be. He still would have likely gotten nothing but automated/canned replies because this particular 'issue' has been brought up time and time again by inexperienced and/or bozo developers (i.e. 'whhaaa... you mean I can't make a living off of someone else's brand?'. No company is going to spend much/any time fielding these types of support requests, even if it's paid support) It would have been a stronger argument if he had an issue that a real person on the other end would have been able to help him with.

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#53

Post by gvurrdon »

majewsky wrote: post #3
petercooper wrote: post #2

I'm starting to think that if Google had a service where you could pay $10/$20/whatever, and actually get someone reasonably well informed to read what you're saying and direct your issue to the right person, they'd have another significant revenue stream on their hands ;-)

There is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not…

I too would very much like those things. But, how would we know that they were telling the truth about not collecting the data?

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#54

Post by Donzo »

adzicg wrote: post #42
nmstoker wrote: post #15

It seems recently like anything inbound to Google goes into /dev/null! A number of us have been trying to get a response regarding Google Apps accounts with Play Music, and we're paying customers. There's no response to the forum https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&u... nor when I put it on Twitter and when a load of us tried direct feedback via the app, that still hasn't got any response. Clea…

anecdotally, you can get good support if you're a customer, but there's a big difference between a customer and a user. I've heard (not confirmed personally, just overheard at conferences), that if you spend enough on adwords to register on their radar as a customer, things are easy to get sorted even if they're nowhere adwords related. the big difference is that for the most part, google users/developers/... are not…

If you generate over $25 a week with AdSense, you can chat with AdSense support at anytime.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2657175

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#55

Post by Jerry2 »

>My requests got closed with a “Thanks for your feedback.” canned response.

This is a prime example of why I don't use my Gmail anymore and why I pay for email. I've read plenty of horror stories of how people lost their Gmail accounts for all kinds of reasons. Most of the losses were completely unrelated to Gmail but related to perceived 'abuse' of Google's other services like Youtube (if your YT account gets shut down for 'copyright abuse', your Gmail will be gone as well). Some people lost Gmail accounts over Google Play store apps they submitted. Basically, if they close your account, your Gmail is linked to it and it's gone too. That scared the heck out of me because I had my whole life in there.

And there's just no way to contact Google's support... unless you know someone at Google.

Author should feel lucky they didn't close his account over this.

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#56

Post by eveningcoffee »

Buetol wrote: post #18

That's what you get when you centralize things. A better thing could be a community-owned store for the chrome extensions (and a community-owner browser). Something like the Mozilla Add-ons site but for Chromium-only extensions. Or being able to add you own stores in Chromium, would be even nice for companies who want to distribute private extensions.

The problem is actually that Chrome is a thing at all. Even greater problem is a lot of developers, who should know better, recommending it en masse to laypersons.

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#57

Post by jamespo »

wernercd wrote: post #48
chiefalchemist wrote: post #16

What's that? Google? Poor support? Poor service? Say it isn't so. To be clear, #Sarcasm :) Google's genius, isn't so much what they do. It's also that they've lowered the bar when it comes to expectations. They understand that designing and building products is relatively easy. The unknowns are in time knowable. On the other hand , reality-based humans drive Google crazy. They are, evidently, to be avoided at all cos…

In some aspects, maybe... in other aspects, they've raised the bar to heights that others can't/won't reach. In a company that has hundreds of products, is that really so hard to believe? Mega successes... mega failures. Still massively successful? Look at Apple. They were at the top with the iPod. Then the iPhone. Then the iPad. Massively successful. Yet they still release turd products like one button mouse, Apple…

Google's customer support isn't horrible, it's just not there

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#58

Post by watwatwatwat »

red_admiral wrote: post #24
majewsky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not…

My guess here is that the subset of users who would be willing to pay a monthly subscription is strongly correlated with the subset that advertisers are interested in targeting most. If a site got say 10% of users to pay a subscription, their value to advertisers - and hence their advertising revenue - might drop a lot more than 10%, leaving them with a net loss.

I run uBlock origin and would pay for a monthly subscription.

Re: How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

#59

Post by watwatwatwat »

gvurrdon wrote: post #53
majewsky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not…

I too would very much like those things. But, how would we know that they were telling the truth about not collecting the data?

It would be illegal.
Post reply on HN