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Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

blog.pushbullet.com

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Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#331

Post by sixothree »

bosswipe wrote: post #113
danpalmer wrote: post #53

As much as we can criticise Google's handling of this situation, the fact that the developer was able to reduce permissions from accessing data on _all websites_ down to _their website_, as well as tighten up a few other permissions, shows that Google is correct that the extension is asking for more than it needs. I hope the developer finds another load of permissions they can tighten up, resubmits, and is approved.…

The big crime isn't the request to reduce permissions. The big crime is the lack of details and lack of communication. It's having to drop everything and work in a panic trying to guess how to please the faceless mysterious robot.

This exemplifies Google's reputation well.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#332

Post by Klonoar »

jtxx wrote: post #64
wlesieutre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is a trivially easy product to switch off of compared to other Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Have you tried Firefox recently?

ProtonMail has come a long way as a replacement for Gmail as well. Suuuper happy with them, they're really responsive to feature requests and support inquiries. I requested for an iOS feature to choose browsers so I could open all links from PM in Firefox. They had it implemented in a month or something... it a quick fix but that impressed me. hence me shilling here They recently added ProtonCalendar too.

I really wish they'd merge this, or implement it themselves (I wrote it, full disclaimer):

https://github.com/ProtonMail/ios-mail/pull/16

As I understand it (and don't quote me on it) they're in the middle of a refactor, so I guess I get it.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#333

Post by mkl »

jonas21 wrote: post #291
jaywalk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, this change is meant to give developers a way to create safer and more performant ad blockers. Imagine anyone actually believing Google is trying to help ad blockers. What a dumb thing for them to even say.

Why? When Apple made the exact same change in Safari, they also gave these reasons, and everyone believed them.

Apple doesn't make their money selling ads.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#334

Post by laughinghan »

danpalmer wrote: post #302
adverbly wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope the developer finds another load of permissions they can tighten up, resubmits, and is approved. You're missing the point here. The developer isn't given any guidance on what needs tightening. This shouldn't be guess and check. These rules impact this developer's livelihood. They should be well defined, documented, and communicated.

Well they did give details on what needs tightening, it's just that those details are in the form of policy points not being hit. What do you think they should be providing? Honest question, I have some ideas but they all feel very tricky/error prone to implement.

At the very, very least, they could identify which of the permissions are in violation and need to be made more restrictive, and which aren't. Someone at some point at Google clearly had that information when they decided to flag the extension, but Google's processes failed to ensure they communicated it.

For the record, I actually agree with you that this is a good policy and will be a positive outcome for users. But while you seem to agree that Google could have handled this better, you're not doing a good job of acknowledging just how developer-hostile Google was here, which is why you're getting a lot of pushback.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#335

Post by tedivm »

danpalmer wrote: post #292
fgonzag wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you got out of it? Google doing a good job? They sent an email with no guidance whatsoever. These guys went above and beyond what most developers would've done, which would have been to contact support until they get a clear answer. This only alienates the extension ecosystem. And this was the primary reason I switched to Firefox. Google is the new Microsoft. If I remember correctly, they started Chrome e…

As mentioned, I think Google have handled it poorly, but their fundamental position – that this extension is incorrectly using permissions – was significantly correct and may prove to be fully correct. Google deserve criticism for the lack of clarity in the communication, they deserve criticism for the lack of human touch, customer support and many other aspects. They do not deserve criticism for calling out incorrec…

That may have been true for the first round, but after they fixed those permissions their extension was still rejected.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#336

Post by mtnGoat »

jtxx wrote: post #64
wlesieutre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is a trivially easy product to switch off of compared to other Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Have you tried Firefox recently?

ProtonMail has come a long way as a replacement for Gmail as well. Suuuper happy with them, they're really responsive to feature requests and support inquiries. I requested for an iOS feature to choose browsers so I could open all links from PM in Firefox. They had it implemented in a month or something... it a quick fix but that impressed me. hence me shilling here They recently added ProtonCalendar too.

I used protonmail for a week, but i got tired of waiting hours and days for some emails to arrive. some we so late the verification links were no longer active. ugh, if only proton mail was up to par with Gmail.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#337

Post by maest »

dylz wrote: post #195
jschwartzi wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand these stupid dialog tricks are why I stopped using Chrome. I'm not an idiot and I know what I'm doing. It's pretty arrogant to assume that I shouldn't be visiting my router's configuration page just because it uses a self-signed certificate. I don't care to set up an X.509 infrastructure at my house, thank you. Please stop mollycoddling me. Firefox continues to do a good job of just letting me visit…

I'm confused - Firefox and Chrome act completely identically to a self signed cert for me. Both let me click through after looking at the cert or expanding a section. I have never been "blocked" by some hidden modal unless the site chooses to be HSTS-enforcing, and in that case Firefox does not allow a clickthrough either. Both examples on latest current, taken right now: Firefox: https://i.imgur.com/4VMjDZ4.png Chro…

Youre confused because you're not using Chrome on OSX: on osx there's no "Proceed to " option.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#338

Post by ocdtrekkie »

skinnymuch wrote: post #32
syshum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Firefox is better than Chrome... Mozilla is becoming more and more Google Like as time progresses, where a few years ago I would have believed it would be unthinkable for Mozilla do so something like this to an extension, today I am not so sure I would trust them either

Can you give a few examples of how Mozilla/Firefox have changed? We all know about FF Quantum. Yeah it sucks what happened. Maybe there was an alternative, but any one saying Firefox should’ve just stuck to not being compatible with Chromium extensions is kidding themselves on how badly that would’ve continued hurting Firefox’s market share. The XUL powered extension I’m sure were powerful so the outcry in certain pl…

DNS-over-HTTPS was the big one for me. Mozilla betrayed us here. They've pushed something browsers shouldn't do into the browser, and in my case, started to roll it out to my browsers despite my network device being set to block it.

They actually managed to implement a policy that respects user choice and freedom less than Chrome, which only implements DoH if your set DNS provider supports it.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#339

Post by vntok »

lvs wrote: post #295
danpalmer wrote: post #53

As much as we can criticise Google's handling of this situation, the fact that the developer was able to reduce permissions from accessing data on _all websites_ down to _their website_, as well as tighten up a few other permissions, shows that Google is correct that the extension is asking for more than it needs. I hope the developer finds another load of permissions they can tighten up, resubmits, and is approved.…

Edit: I was the one who misread it. My mistake

> As I looked at the permissions and what our extension actually needs to operate, I noticed a great opportunity to reduce our permissions requests. We do not need to request access to data on https://*/* and http://*/*. Instead, we can simply request data access for https://*.pushbullet.com/*, http://*.pushbullet.com/*, and http://localhost/*. This is a huge reduction in the private data our extension could theoretically access. A big win!

They were completely in the wrong there, and posing a huge security risk to all of their users.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#340

Post by m-p-3 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #36
Baeocystin wrote: post #11

Another long-term PushBullet customer here. Anyone at Google who is listening- this kind of behavior kills my desire to continue using your products dead. I need functionality, of the type PushBullet has provided for years, to do my work. The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things. Behavior like this is simply unacceptable. If you want people to use your services, you need to have s…

Chrome is a trivially easy product to switch off of compared to other Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Have you tried Firefox recently?

I switched from Pushbullet to Join and one of the hurdle the dev is having is that something regarding push messaging was severely lacking in Firefox compared to Chrome, hence the lack of an extension for it on Firefox.
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