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Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
91–100 of 187 posts
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#92Side rant: I have an extension which has been published for about 6 years now. They've broken the extension several times due to removing or changing the APIs. I have a couple of bad reviews due to having to remove features from the app because they removed functionality or APIs. The past couple of years things have been more stable, but still, it's been painful.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
Go to Digital Ocean, make a NextCloud droplet, and configure backups to Backblaze. There you go. Bonus point if you buy a small server and become a custodian of your own data.
Bonus points when Digital Ocean nukes your account with no recourse, because that's happened to people in the past.
So, follow the backup instructions very very very carefully people!
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#94I've never really been a fan of the whole "browser extensions" thing, with perhaps the exception of UI mods, and things like this only serve to reinforce that notion. I prefer to use a MITM filtering proxy, which works in all browsers and is independent of, so isn't beholden to, the authoritarian institutions which control them. Incidentally I also have a filter which does the same thing as his extension, and I proba…
Which local proxy do you use?
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
It's called Google Takeout[1]. Use it. Download all of your data. Back it up in a place you trust.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#96Same thing happened to me [1], with a slightly different rationale for pulling the extension. This happened despite tens of thousands of users, years of good reviews, and an extension so useful that Google's own accessibility team demos it at conferences. I was only able to get the situation sorted because I know people who work at Google on the Chrome team. Even with all this, it took weeks to get the previous versi…
Hey, it's off topic, but I just learned about your product and sent a link of the product page (beelinereader.com/individual) to my colleagues - only to find out that my email was filtered as a spam by FortiMail! Apparently, the offending text was that URL. Maybe it's somehow related? Was this product site previously infested by malware or something?
Wow, thanks for letting me know. We have never had any malware, though our inline install of Chrome/Firefox extensions has been flagged by Avast at times (despite our attempts to get whitelisted). Neither our website nor our tools have ever done anything even vaguely shady — we don't gather user-level browsing data or anything else like that, so it's a big bummer when we get flagged like this.
Do you know if there's a way that your company can report this as an inappropriate block to FortiMail? I will try to reach out to them also, but my guess is they'll be more receptive to a customer request than to one of their blacklisted websites!
BTW, we're not publicizing this, but right now we're testing out a "BeeLine Advocate" program. Basically, if you install the extension and complete the free trial (2 wks), you'll be invited to get free access to our Pro tier in exchange for filling out periodic surveys.
We've just opened up this program, and it'll probably be open to new users for 3 weeks or so. Thought I'd share with the community here, since HNers are great for feedback (as you've just shown with your comment!).
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have told them that this issue has pushed us to look more at other platforms. We are also on Firefox (much easier now that their extension platform is similar to Chrome’s), but we still have the vast majority of our users on Chrome (60k versus I even submitted our extension to Opera. Months went by with no response. Dev forums show that this is a common experience. We’re also on iOS, but since extensions don’t real…
You can start inviting users to install Firefox. If enough sites do it FF share will raise and Google will change their behavior.
This is a good point, and it actually fits with our ethos of minimal tracking, which I've been meaning to emphasize in our onboarding process.
Maybe a nudge toward Firefox can be part of that message.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
I always get some photos printed. Granted, you can't print the hundreds we take these days, but do you really need ALL?
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#99Isn't that extension going straight against Google's ability to track what users are clicking on, i.e. against their core business? Maybe the warning wording is cumbersome or opaque, but what would the author expect? Company not protecting their turf? The only surprising thing is that they did it in this unimaginative hidden fashion, not fitting their friendly progressive image.
The surprising thing is that they let the extension exist for so long.
Google makes most of their money from ads. If you interfere with that then of course you'll be in trouble.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#100Back when Facebook didn't support linked hashtags I made an extension that removed them from posts on facebook.com (they just annoyed me). It still worked perfectly even after Facebook added native support.
It was active for many years with great reviews and a few hundred users.
Google pulled it early this year because Facebook asked them to... They claimed it violated copyright. There was no option to appeal.
Not trying to make a point here. Just offering another anecdote.