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

palant.de

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

#171

Post by anghor »

singularity2001 wrote: post #130
Waterluvian wrote: post #77

Earlier 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…

> find a silver bullet solution switch to apple

are you trolling?

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

#173

Post by palant »

rasz wrote: post #162

Im a bit confused: - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search-link... is still in the store - it IS missing the picture

Oh, that's nice - it was restored without giving me any kind of notification. Developer Dashboard says that the screenshot is there, not sure why it doesn't show.

Edit: Got a mail now, supposedly the issue here was an internal miscommunication resulting in a rejection. So all is good again and all I have to do is resubmit that screenshot.

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

#174

Post by jamieb007 »

userbinator wrote: post #75

I'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…

How carefully have you analyzed the MITM proxy you are using? Many have security holes and you may be opening yourself up to attacks. Modern browsers have placed a lot of effort into security, you may be undoing a lot of the transport security.

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

#175

Post by ucaetano »

michaelt wrote: post #151
ucaetano wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is impossible to talk to Talking costs money, a lot of money, far more than computers. It seems that Google One will have paid support, so your problem is solved!

If you’re locked out of the account that paid for support, how do you prove your eligibility for support to get back into it?

No idea, the product wasn't launched yet, but that seems like the most obvious use case to address.

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

#176

Post by bdcravens »

pgeorgi wrote: post #160
bdcravens wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing that makes Google a more challenging beast than Facebook: you don't have to have an account to be an asset for Google, and you likely feed them more data all the time.

All those like buttons on the net can be used by Facebook to create shadow profiles, too.

Definitely, though between search, communicating with the many Gmail users, AdWords, YouTube, and Android's marketshare, Google Map's dominance, etc, Google is IMO far more ubiquitous

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

#177

Post by joshschreuder »

dannyw wrote: post #132
joshschreuder wrote: post #42

My extension, which was just a script block and some CSS tweaks was banned as it was a paywall bypass for a popular news site in Australia. Fair enough according to their policy but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when I got the email as the extension was quite popular at the time.

Adblock: OK. Paywall bypass: Not OK. Hmm...

Yeah I know right?

The reason given was:

> We don't allow products or services that facilitate unauthorized access to content on websites that circumvents paywalls.

The functionality from the extension was roughly possible with a set of adblock rules anyway, I just packaged it up for the less technically inclined.

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

#178

Post by Dylan16807 »

shezi wrote: post #118
Waterluvian wrote: post #77

Earlier 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…

I developed such a service some time ago, but it's impossible to find any market for it. The non-technical people say "but I have it on Google already?!" and the technical people say "I just created a DO droplet and configured backup to Backblaze, easy and cheap!!". I find both options to be not ideal, since I'd like a simple, secure and safe way of storing my pictures. But that's the way the market is.

> and the technical people say "I just created a DO droplet and configured backup to Backblaze, easy and cheap!!".

That's very much missing the point. The non-technical option is inside that post: Backblaze. Do that twice, the second time with crashplan or carbonite, and you can keep your files safe without any trouble.

The real problem is that it can only protect the files on your computer. If you have data that's fed directly to google, there's no simple software to get it back out to where it can be backed up.

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

#179

Post by Dylan16807 »

pjmlp wrote: post #121
jerrac wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't signing supposed to solve some of that? You sign the binaries you host on your site, and the OS checks to make sure the signature is valid. (Maybe against a non-profit "Let's Sign".) If it's a valid signature, then you know it was signed by someone your OS trusts. Ideally, the OS would not trust signatures from malicious actors. I've never been involved with that kind of thing, so I'm just guessing. Feel free t…

There have been cases where malware authors were able to change package contents while keeping the signature.

What kind of package? That probably means the signing is way too complicated. There's not much to get wrong in doing a single hash of an entire zip package and then appending a simple signature of that hash.

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

#180

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

gnicholas wrote: post #54
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another good option is posting your story on HN: if it gets to the front page, you have good chances of solving your problem.

I did post at the time. Didn’t get much attention.

Well, it worked in this case (see the updates to the original post).
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