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Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

palant.de

11–20 of 187 posts

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#11

> Anyway, dear users of my Google search link fix extension. If you happen to use Google Chrome, I sincerely recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox. No, not only because of this simple extension of course. But Addons.Mozilla.Org policies happen to be enforced in a transparent way, and appealing is always possible. Mozilla also has a good track record of keeping out malicious extensions, something that cannot be said…

[deleted]

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#12

> Anyway, dear users of my Google search link fix extension. If you happen to use Google Chrome, I sincerely recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox. No, not only because of this simple extension of course. But Addons.Mozilla.Org policies happen to be enforced in a transparent way, and appealing is always possible. Mozilla also has a good track record of keeping out malicious extensions, something that cannot be said…

> when Firefox Mobile keeps uninstalling [...] uBlock Origin

What? I'm using it without issue of any kind for several years...

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#13

> Anyway, dear users of my Google search link fix extension. If you happen to use Google Chrome, I sincerely recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox. No, not only because of this simple extension of course. But Addons.Mozilla.Org policies happen to be enforced in a transparent way, and appealing is always possible. Mozilla also has a good track record of keeping out malicious extensions, something that cannot be said…

Are you saying that Firefox mobile has uninstalled add-ons from your browser multiple times?

I've been running Nightly mobile for more than a year and never had that happen. It sounds like a very strange bug, maybe it had something to do with Sync?

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#14
post #2

It's interesting to observe current landscape of app delivery, previously it was just binaries or sources on developer's site now it's shifting to centralized model in the name of protecting users from malicious actors. I wonder if there is a way to have a cookie (developers don't need to worry about random behavior of your centralized owner) and eat it too (fight malware).

In this case the centralized owner is the Chrome Web Store; you're leasing space in their list of offerings at their terms, for better or worse. It's worth noting that the Chrome Web Store is just an easy (and highly visible, of course) way of installing extensions but not the only one; developer mode and self-installing is totally possible (though admittedly higher friction).

Protecting users from malicious actors serves in the best interests of the Chrome Web Store, certainly, but there's nothing stopping users from running their own security software.

In a more ideal world a developer would distribute an extension from their own platform and the user would run a security check against it (and all future versions). Until we get to that world, though, a store that is focused on integrity of security and expresses its right to remove things that don't fit it's model is convenient.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#15
post #2

It's interesting to observe current landscape of app delivery, previously it was just binaries or sources on developer's site now it's shifting to centralized model in the name of protecting users from malicious actors. I wonder if there is a way to have a cookie (developers don't need to worry about random behavior of your centralized owner) and eat it too (fight malware).

Maybe something along the lines of having Firefox/Chrome/etc allowing people to specfiy "extra" extension/addon repos to query?

That'd let external places create collections of extensions/addon's, which would probably open things up enough.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#16

> Anyway, dear users of my Google search link fix extension. If you happen to use Google Chrome, I sincerely recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox. No, not only because of this simple extension of course. But Addons.Mozilla.Org policies happen to be enforced in a transparent way, and appealing is always possible. Mozilla also has a good track record of keeping out malicious extensions, something that cannot be said…

How can you say extensions run on Chrome without issue in comparison to mobile Firefox, when mobile chrome has no extensions?

What kind of twisted logic is this? uBlock can't run without issue on mobile Chrome, since there's no uBlock for mobile Chrome. Even super locked-down mobile Safari has ad blockers available.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#17
post #2

It's interesting to observe current landscape of app delivery, previously it was just binaries or sources on developer's site now it's shifting to centralized model in the name of protecting users from malicious actors. I wonder if there is a way to have a cookie (developers don't need to worry about random behavior of your centralized owner) and eat it too (fight malware).

well the solution is sandboxed temporary runtime environment with user controlled session duration, user managed permissions and strong profile siloes, also known as: your browser.

How would browser extensions fit into this model?

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#18

They somehow have the man power to ban your extension in 2 hours and 30 minutes without an explanation as to why, but than when I get a fake copyright claim on my most popular YouTube video somehow it takes three months, 12 emails and I still don't get the ~$900 lost revenue back.

[deleted]

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#19

> Anyway, dear users of my Google search link fix extension. If you happen to use Google Chrome, I sincerely recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox. No, not only because of this simple extension of course. But Addons.Mozilla.Org policies happen to be enforced in a transparent way, and appealing is always possible. Mozilla also has a good track record of keeping out malicious extensions, something that cannot be said…

On nightly, never had ublock or umatrix uninstalled.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#20
In another thread[1] on HN today there was discussion over developers selling out their web extensions to marketing corporations which end up filling them with tracking scripts and malware. Someone suggested that google should be much more aggressive at filtering out said extensions, and one of the responses was a sarcastic comment over a future article about Google attacking extension developers and the free web.

And less than 24 hours later, here we are.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447816

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