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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

#141

Post by fdgdasfadsf »

GrinningFool wrote: post #87
red_admiral wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trouble is that at this stage hoovering up customer data is in Google's DNA. As far as my perceptions go all a paid option means is that now they attach my credit card details to their data on me.

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

#142

Post by mhurron »

spot wrote: post #37
mhurron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling access to the user that created the data is the same damn thing for the end user. It's just that in the way Google does it, Google gets paid over and over instead of one time selling a static list.

not it isn't. if you sell the data then it goes into 3rd party hands and out of google's control and they can do all kinds of bad things with it.

'Bad things' are tracking (Google does this), targeted ads (Google does this), selling access to information so others can target ads and drop tracking (Google does this), allowing Governments access to your activities (Google does this)

Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here?

The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.

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

#143

Post by atombath »

zenopopovici wrote: post #126
kowdermeister wrote: post #84

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

You got it wrong. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in this way was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google.

Devil's advocate: it isn't in Google's interest to give you legal advice.

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

#144

Post by protomyth »

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…

> one button mouse

Although I have some serious issues with Apple (e.g. iPhone 6 plus), Apple hasn't released a one button mouse in a long time. They all have two buttons, just check the preferences.

Frankly, Apple TV is actually a pretty good product since my technophobe Mom can use it for its intended purpose. I still don't like the whole remote policy, but that's a developer thing and frankly Apple really isn't the most friendly company to developers either.

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

#145

Post by VikingCoder »

jondubois wrote: post #140

Silicon Valley companies are an oligopoly - They behave more like collaborators than competitors. This type of behaviour just confirms it. Why does Google care if someone wrote software to block Facebook ads? Maybe they have a secret deal with Facebook to help cleanse the world from ad blockers? Obviously Apple has no skin in the game (they don't rely on ad money) - Maybe that's why they allowed the ad blocker to rem…

They should take it up with the government - rather than having terms of service which allow them to remove content they deem inappropriate? How exactly would going to the government make things better for anyone?

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

#147

Post by kowdermeister »

zenopopovici wrote: post #126
kowdermeister wrote: post #84

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

You got it wrong. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in this way was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google.

> If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it

Most of programming btw is like that. Google throw an exception with a better error than "undefined is not an object". Maybe it's easy for me from the outside to pinpoint the problem, but it's usually about reading between the lines.

Their support is indeed poor, but you are not entitled anything and probably the lesson here is not to build anything serious on 3rd party platforms where you are unsure about licensing, legal questions. I've been burned once by SoundCloud legal team for using their public API.

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

#148

Post by jondubois »

VikingCoder wrote: post #145
jondubois wrote: post #140

Silicon Valley companies are an oligopoly - They behave more like collaborators than competitors. This type of behaviour just confirms it. Why does Google care if someone wrote software to block Facebook ads? Maybe they have a secret deal with Facebook to help cleanse the world from ad blockers? Obviously Apple has no skin in the game (they don't rely on ad money) - Maybe that's why they allowed the ad blocker to rem…

They should take it up with the government - rather than having terms of service which allow them to remove content they deem inappropriate? How exactly would going to the government make things better for anyone?

I don't see how 'Cleaner Facebook' is a brand infringement. Anybody who downloads this app would surely know that the app is not made by Facebook (it doesn't attempt to mislead users into thinking that).

There is a clear distinction between claiming that something is made 'For Facebook' vs 'By Facebook".

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

#149

Post by newscracker »

majewsky wrote: post #13
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus far, I accomplish that via: Duck, Duck, Go; NoScript; Privacy Badger; and uBlock Origin. Its silly to need to do all that, but it works well for me.

uBlock cannot give me a pristine timeline; Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. It's not just about ads, it's about how a tool's design is poisoned by the need for maximal ad revenue. As far as DuckDuckGo goes, I would really love to use them regularly. DDG is even the default search engine on my notebook, but I find myself going to Google in the second step about 90% of the time because DDG's r…

I have DDG as my default search engine, but for many things (mainly tech related) I use a !s command to search on StartPage. [1] While Startpage claims not to track users, it has some ads similar to Google (these can be blocked easily). Since it searches through Google, the results are great. That leaves me using Google somewhat rarely, like for example, if I want to search based on a specific time range or do a reverse image search. This approach provides me the freedom to be logged into say, Gmail, without worrying that my searches would be recorded and used for profile building and advertising (I take care not to search on Google while logged in to any of its sites in the same browser or a non-private browser window in the same browser).

[1]: https://startpage.com

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

#150

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

FussyZeus wrote: post #38
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…

You'd think if they could blow billions of dollars on tons of industries they have no intention of actually entering, they could find a few million somewhere to hire some CSRs. Google's gotten big enough now where they aren't incentivized to give a shit.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company." -– Saturday Night Live, September 18, 1976.

Hey, fifty years.

(So, are we getting Baby Googles and Facebooks in another ten years, or are those times behind us?)

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