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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

#181

Post by aminorex »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #106
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…

With Google, you're not the customer. You're the product.

Hog farmers treat their products better.

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

#182

Post by metaphorm »

3pt14159 wrote: post #116
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…

There is a difference between supporting every customer (aka, the mass of people behind your average YouTube comment) and supporting developers that promote your ecosystem. By failing to support this one person this one time, they've damaged a lot more people's experience, and the average developer is much more likely to be an influencer. This guy is influencing influencers because he couldn't get a 2 minute support…

it's a tradeoff. having engaged support for every app developer would mean they would have to admit many fewer apps to the ecosystem. they have chosen to more freely admit apps but provide no support for them.

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

#183

Post by aminorex »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #150
FussyZeus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

More likely the multinationals will breakup the governments this time around.

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

#184

Post by aminorex »

barkbro wrote: post #153
tobltobs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how an add-on posted on the Chrome store is subject to Facebook's ToS. It might be aiding people in breaking the ToS, but is there really a law against that?

Google makes the laws now. Governments are mostly irrelevant.

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

#185

Post by zenopopovici »

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…

I'm not entitled for support when I'm developing for their platform ... and I'm supposed to be a sightseer 4 years in the future.. I'm gonna stop right there...

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

#186

Post by zenopopovici »

sickbeard wrote: post #146

You could have saved yourself some trouble and did the right thing. Changing it from "Cleaner Facebook" to "Cleaner - For Facebook" won't solve any copyright claims against it. I suspect it's mostly the "facebook" part.

Why won't it solve any copyright claims against it? It did in the Safari Extensions Gallery ... It's quite easy to make required changes when the rules are clear and communication exists.

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

#187

Post by colemannerd »

malka wrote: post #105
adamc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. At least on other corporate eco systems (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), if you are a paying customer, you have great support.

Absolutely! You only have to use 10 year old technology for that support.

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

#188

Post by fenomas »

nkozyra wrote: post #172
fenomas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This strikes me as pedantic - we can probably safely assume that not doing the thing that caused the extension to be removed might in fact not cause the extension to be removed. Can I say that with authority? Of course not. I can't say the window wouldn't be broken had you not thrown a baseball at it, either. But I can tell you the window is broken because you threw a baseball at it.

In your metaphor, the article isn't about why the window broke. It's premise is that once broken, Google makes it impossible to find out how or whether it can be fixed.

Chastising the author for breaking it in the first place is neither here nor there.

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

#189

Post by zenopopovici »

al_chemist wrote: post #121
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

Except "for X" way is suggested by Google in their "copyright infrigement" email.

I think you confused the mails ... it's not.

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

#190

Post by deanclatworthy »

kuschku wrote: post #177
deanclatworthy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to get legality involved. Their terms of service also give them the right to kick you off the service - as they please. If you don't follow them - you don't get to use the nice things. It's pretty simple - whether we agree or not :)

> Their terms of service also give them the right to kick you off the service - as they please. Actually, they don’t, as rulings in Germany have shown, Facebook does NOT have the right to close accounts "at will" or for ToS violations. Especially not if the relevant ToS paragraph does not conform to law. (Just like you can’t refuse to serve customers for their religion in the US, for example)

ToS don't associate directly with laws. They are terms of service, not legal requirements.

If you go into a restaurant and put your finger in a fellow customer's food, that is not against the law, but the manager will throw you out. It's the same with Facebook's ToS, they can decide who and who cannot use their service. I have read a lot about how Germany has dealt with privacy within the Facebook platform, but have not seen anything about reinstating users who have breached ToS?

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