How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by hiddenkrypt » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #144

wernercd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I'm using an apple "magic mouse" right now, and while yes, it is capable of right clicking, the surface is still a single piece. This causes more than a few misclicks for me. A mouse designed with separate surfaces for each button doesn't have the same problem. They begrudgingly added a right click, and their 'design over all else' philosophy has made it an inferior product.

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

#162

Post by chris_wot » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

user8341116 wrote: post #134

zenopopovici wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. It's also a cleaner that works only of Facebook. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. 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 "Cleaner - For Facebook" was…

I got pulled over for speeding once, all I did was lean out the window and say, hey officer, what gives? Everyone else was going the same speed as me? He said yeah you're right, have a good one! Actually that didn't happen because that's not the way the world works.

How did the officer have the legal right to pull you over? Why, because you broke the law as it is codified. Google haven't codified anything, and actively allow apps to do what they selectively disallow on only certain apps.

I'm surprised you can't see the difference!

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

#163

Post by x1798DE » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

deanclatworthy wrote: post #160

x1798DE wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (good luck calling it fair use) Fair use is a defense against copyright infringement, it has nothing to do with trademark infringement. The relevant test here would probably be substantial likelihood of confusion. I don't personally find it confusing, but I'm probably not an average person. I think "Facebook('s) X" is the much more common formulation for branded apps, and it's very common to call something "Cleaner…

IANAL but.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_(U.S._trademark_law... I have personally been working at a company where we had a problem with this. We were providing reviews of companies' websites, and therefore had to use their name and trademark. It was tricky legal ground for us to do this and we were challenged a few times.

Fair enough, I did not realize there was a different concept called that in trademark law.

I still don't understand why you think it's absurd that he would assert such a defense, though. The article you linked clearly states that nominative use is actually encouraged by US trademark law. It seems a no brainer that you'd be able to specify the platform that your product works with.

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

#164

Post by chris_wot » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #137

zenopopovici wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. It's also a cleaner that works only of Facebook. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. 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 "Cleaner - For Facebook"…

> So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. This is not a great defense. We know from the trail you presented that someone from FB's legal/compliance team found your extension, not the others, likely due to its visibility and popularity. That doesn't mean the other extensions are in the clear. It just means they weren't on FB's radar. > The extension i…

The standard for trademark infringement is "likelihood of confusion", which is why "Cleaner for Facebook" passed muster at Apple.

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

#165

Post by chris_wot » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

zenopopovici wrote: post #122

I'm really surprised this got so much traction..., I didn't submit this to HN. Baffled that so many users went trough roughly the same experience. (I'm the original author)

Great project - is this in a repo we can fork?

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

#166

Post by fenomas » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #85

> 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 is…

> Frankly, it would have taken just one thing - remove references to Facebook.

Unless you're part of the team at google with the power to reinstate extensions, I don't know how you can possibly claim to know that.

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

#167

Post by newscracker » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

fractal618 wrote: post #5

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 ;-)

Assuming one person could serve 50 customers in this manner. And they were to earn 50k/year. The monthly fee for this service would be about $80.

Your assumption that one person can serve 50 customers a month seems to be quite low. That comes to spending about four hours per customer to respond, track and provide a resolution or workaround! Of course, the duration would vary depending on what kind of support channel is used (phone vs. chat vs. email). You also seem to be assuming that all paying customers would have major issues that can only be resolved by working with other teams, getting a new resolution or change implemented, etc.

In reality, most customer cases can be resolved quickly by searching for documentation and pointing them to it and/or explaining things better (and improving the support documentation along side when necessary).

I would assume that at least 30 customers can be served per eight hour working day. That's spending more than 15 minutes per customer and is usually adequate (on average) even for phone support! With my extrapolation here, which is again just an example (real scenarios would be different), the basic cost incurred by the service provider for the salary alone comes to about $7 per user per month. Add for overheads and it would still be fine to charge $10 or $12 per month. If service tiers are used, then there could be multiple slabs, mechanisms for support and turnaround times - all these would bring down the actual cost further.

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

#168

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

kowdermeister wrote: post #147

zenopopovici wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 3r…

[deleted]

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

#169

Post by deanclatworthy » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

x1798DE wrote: post #163

deanclatworthy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_(U.S._trademark_law... I have personally been working at a company where we had a problem with this. We were providing reviews of companies' websites, and therefore had to use their name and trademark. It was tricky legal ground for us to do this and we were challenged a few times.

Fair enough, I did not realize there was a different concept called that in trademark law. I still don't understand why you think it's absurd that he would assert such a defense, though. The article you linked clearly states that nominative use is actually encouraged by US trademark law. It seems a no brainer that you'd be able to specify the platform that your product works with.

The main problem here is that the author has created a product, which is harmful to the company in question whilst using their trademark. Generally courts don't like that.

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

#170

Post by kuschku » Wed, Sep 07, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #93

eloisant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense not to have humans responding about how their site is indexed or removed, because that's pretty much everyone. However, they should really consider hiring support staff for: * Their paying customers * The partners bringing value to their products, typically extension developers and Android app developers

Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support. Cloud and Adwords being 2 examples. As you go through the sign up flow, they give you a phone number to call if you have any questions. As a software engineer at Google, I have handled a few bugs or issues that originated from customers calling our support lines.

> Products that make google money that you have to pay for have some amazing support.

And yet, the best place to get support, even for Cloud customers – as has happened before – seems to be this very website, because the Google support just doesn’t care.