We at Pushbullet have received some bad news from Google. It appears our extension will be removed from the Chrome Web Store if we don’t make required changes within 14 days. Not good! The bigger problem? Google hasn’t told us what those required changes are.
The Pushbullet Chrome extension has been on the Chrome Web store for over 6 years, currently has over 1,000,000 users, and has a 4.5 star average rating.
Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
351–360 of 811 posts
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#352Earlier 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.
Is there a provider that lets you send emails from free format users on your domain? With catch all addresses the mail goes into my other@domain account. I use a different email address per site. Now with gmail if I want to reply with that account I first need to create it as an alias. If I want to reply from my phone it even needs to be a full account. Is there any way to fix this? Short of using mutt and write the from header myself?
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#353Stuff like this makes me wonder why Chrome's security model allows things if it can be scanned and deemed unsafe. Isn't it preferable to bake such restrictions into the extension API if Google didn't want PushBullet to go beyond it? Why does this need to be enforced by an app store?
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know some will reject the idea.. but if Google is your domain registrar, they'll do email forwarding without an extra charge. I've started using @mydomain where the is the website/service I've registered for... doesn't help with my existing stack though.
You can just do forwarding. I’ve run my own mail service since the 80s, and when I need a google login to work with someone I just create it and forward my mail. When the project is over, just delete it. Easy-peasy. Unless a client wants to use google docs I‘ve never found an account to add any value anyway. I don’t use google search much any more but when I do it works fine without cookies. And I try chrome occasion…
I was referring to google hosting the mail service, so no need to diy or pay for another server, and you don't need to use gmail with it.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#355As 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.…
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…
> They sent an email with no guidance whatsoever.
Did they, though? The email seemed pretty clear that the problem was requesting more permissions than necessary.
I'm no Google fan, by any means, but if it's that hard for the developer to check which permissions their own app is requesting, I don't know if it's Google's fault.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#356Another 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 when Google killed of ublock origin in Chrome. Firefox is quite nice these days. I just use chrome for development because I'm more familiar with their dev tools.
I will very occasionally find a site that's broken in Firefox and works in Chrome though.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#357Earlier 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.
For comparison, some anecdotes elsewhere in the thread about how Apple attaches screengrabs and even decompiles apps to point to exact methods/lines of code in apps they reject from the iOS App Store, even small free ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170498
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#358Earlier 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…
Do it properly or don’t do it all is my motto. They could have been more forthcoming from the start. This is mystery meat communication.
> the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#359Does your browser extension really need to access localhost/* - as in, port 80 on my local machine? That would make me very uncomfortable about installing the extension. Would it be possible to restrict the extension to accessing a specific port or endpoint that is used by PushBullet?
We use localhost to communicate with our desktop application which is commonly installed alongside our extension by users. An example of how we use this communication channel is preventing both our extension and desktop apps from showing notifications on the same computer. Our apps are all about notifications so this would get unacceptable very fast. We ping our local desktop app via localhost to see if it can manage…
It might be a bit trickier, because if you hardcode the port in the manifest, the user wouldn't be able to change it?
Might be better than nothing I guess, but on the long term you'd need to add the port in settings and request the permission for localhost+port dynamically? But that's got another issue, e.g. last time I tried it [0] for my extension, Firefox didn't support dynamic URL permissions for URLs with ports.
[0] https://github.com/karlicoss/grasp/blob/f24378ebae68c22bea03...
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#360Earlier 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?
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.
Do you know any more details about what's lacking?