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

by.graffino.com

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

#61

Post by Betabot101 »

Jerry2 wrote: post #55

> 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…

I've recently started to move a lot of the services I use away from Google provided services. Who'd you go with instead of Gmail for email?

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

#62

Post by davidgerard »

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…

I can reassure you, as a Google Apps for Business customer, that they treat their paying customers with every bit the same contempt as they treat their free end users.

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

#64

Post by bjz_ »

piyush_soni wrote: post #39
deanclatworthy wrote: post #23

What you are doing not only violated Facebook's trademark (good luck calling it fair use), but it's also against Facebook's ToS. They have actively gone after extension authors who alter the Facebook experience and even deactivated their accounts. Rightly or wrongly, when you sign up to a service you are bound by the conditions they set out. In this case, making an extension to block advertising is probably not going…

But then, aren't Adblock Plus/uBlock Origin violating the ToS by altering the 'Facebook experience' as well? They're still there on the Web store.

They don't have 'Facebook' in the name. Probably much easier for them to go after trademark infringement.

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

#65

Post by intralizee »

I've had good support with real Google support "people" when using Google's Cloud Service. It may just be that the extension falls under the category of ad blocking and they choose to ignore for beneficial reasons over actually replying. It would be curious to see the same thing happening towards a popular extension that doesn't deal with ads.

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

#66

Post by adzicg »

davidgerard wrote: post #62
adzicg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can reassure you, as a Google Apps for Business customer, that they treat their paying customers with every bit the same contempt as they treat their free end users.

Google Apps for Business isn't adwords, though. my comment was about adwords customers.

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

#67

Post by adamc »

edent wrote: post #22

Not providing any meaningful support is Google's business model - you can see them talk about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I > Google estimates that they would need to hire over 20,000 customer service people to deal with 1 query every three years from each customer. So it has decided - as far as possible - to employ zero people and rely on algorithms. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-custo…

Which is a really good argument for never developing for the Google eco-system. Because you can't afford to invest in a platform where if something goes wrong you're just f*cked.

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

#68

Post by piyush_soni »

bjz_ wrote: post #64
piyush_soni wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then, aren't Adblock Plus/uBlock Origin violating the ToS by altering the 'Facebook experience' as well? They're still there on the Web store.

They don't have 'Facebook' in the name. Probably much easier for them to go after trademark infringement.

Yes, that's what I meant by my comment that hiding ads is probably ok for them, it's only the name that they're concerned about.

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

#69

Post by geomark »

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…

"They are, evidently, to be avoided at all costs."

It's as if Google embodies the attidue of millenials.

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

#70

Post by dordoka »

blihp wrote: post #51
dordoka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't get me wrong but, would a "do not use FB or Facebook in your extension name" reply be such difficult to respond? In my understanding, support is there to help users (developers in this case).

I agree that the developer should have guessed that by himself, but the real issue here I believe is the lack of any useful response, the automatic takedown of the extension and no way to get any response after "expending" the apparent "two tries" that you get from Google when something like this happens.

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