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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

#81

Post by aikah »

adzicg wrote: post #66
davidgerard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You still implied that being a paid customer vs user made a difference. It kind of doesn't for some services... but that's good, that's an opportunity for the competition to piggy back on that : "We're not Google, here you'll benefit from a real customer service!".

The worst is that google doesn't even have good tools that allow its community of users to help each others, aside from a mediocre Q&A forum.

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

#82

Post by nabla9 »

The economic model for writing apps for closed distribution platforms, or -stores is kind of serfdom without manorial courts. You sign of your rights for being heard or listened. You are in the mercy of the platform owner.

From the point of platform owner this kind of indifference and arbitrariness is justified with low cost and it's not going to go away. They only need to keep the frequency of occurrences within acceptable limits.

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

#83

Post by nkozyra »

njloof wrote: post #75
revelation wrote: post #50

You use "Facebook" in the name of your extension to lure users into installing it. Google tells you you can't use the trademark. You again use the trademark. Google gives up on your spammy ways. They seem to have done everything right here.

Register it as "for FB" -- users will know what it stands for.

If you read the original email, the complaint also lists "FB."

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

#84

Post by kowdermeister »

This story has some parody feeling to it :)

Just to recap:

1) Receives a take down notice for trademark violation

2) Changes name from "Cleaner Facebook" TO "Cleaner — for Facebook" :)

3) Gets surprised as taken down again

Let me suggest a few names _without_ Facebook in the title:

- Social facelift

- Clean UI

- Fresh look for social media

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

#85

Post by nkozyra »

> After 3 months of trying everything I could think of, I give up.

Frankly, it would have taken just one thing - remove references to Facebook. I know that's basically amounting to doing some linguistic gymnastics in order to express what your extension does, but you _did_ in fact use a trademark without their consent, and ostensibly in a way that reduces their revenue stream. This really isn't a Graffino v Google issue.

Expecting "due process" is also an unrealistic complaint in this scenario.

> I just want you to think twice before creating a revenue stream based on the Chrome Web Store.

Forget the Chrome Web Store. Think twice before creating a revenue stream based on any service that can pull out the rug at any moment. If you don't control your own destiny things like this can and will happen.

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

#86

Post by piyush_soni »

tobltobs wrote: post #80
piyush_soni wrote: post #35

The exact same thing happened to me. I have a fairly successful Firefox add-on named 'Yahoo Mail Hide Ad Panel'[0], and it is one of the top-rated extensions on Mozilla's Add-on store. When I wrote it for Chrome, they removed it apparently after a complaint from Yahoo. Understandable, but I asked them how are the other extensions containing the same name not removed? No answer. I asked if "Hide Ad Panel for Yahoo Mai…

I guess it is not using "Facebook" or in your case "Yahoo" in your extension name, but changing the content for a user of a Facebook or Yahoo page is what is triggering the remove of the extension. If it is against the TOS (or Platform Policy) I don't see how else they are supposed to react if the get a complain.

It's not the removal of add-on that pissed me off, but the lack of proper response on what would be the acceptable resolution. Not using the name would change the meaning as both of these are not general purpose ad blockers. Had they replied saying "for " is ok, I wouldn't have removed it. At least they could have replied with a flat 'No' to make things clear.

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

#87

Post by GrinningFool »

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.

It seems to me the opposite. If someone cares enough to pay for the content directly ,I suspect that person is the one who will be going out of the way to avoid ads and tracking in the first place.

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

#88

Post by criddell »

dboreham wrote: post #45
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 ;-)

It would cost much more than $10/$20 to provide that service, so you'd be in "whatever" territory.

Then charge $500. Whatever it needs to cost, charge it.

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

#89

Post by KiwiCoder »

Betabot101 wrote: post #61
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?

Not OP, but I moved all of my email from free Gmail to paid Fastmail about 2 years ago, and I've not had a moment of regret.

I send quite a lot of email for work and other things and I have what I think is a higher-than-average number of email addresses to manage.

One adjustment I made - I now archive older emails to avoid extra storage costs, which in turn means that searching for older emails is slightly more hassle.

Fastmail's web interface and mobile app are not quite as slick (as gmail) but this isn't a big deal for me personally.

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

#90

Post by mattkevan »

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…

The difference is that Apple's support in general (everyone drops the ball occasionally) is very good. Millions of people out there with iPhones, but they can always get support for them if they need it.
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