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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

#521

Post by solidasparagus »

znpy wrote: post #463
dilandau wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We hear you and are eagerly looking to improve things. Joking aside, isn't this just what people should come to expect from the company that has always tried to normalize the "no support and no service" model? If these antics start causing GOOG to lose share in the browser market then they may review these policies, but I highly doubt it. At the end of the day GOOG is an ad company and publicly-traded at that. They…

> "no support and no service" model? this is one of the reasons why Google cloud will lose to AWS in the long run. AWS is customer obsessed, Google is not.

At Amazon the most important person is the customer. At Google the most important person is the Google engineer. I firmly believe that's why they suck at selling enterprise products.

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

#522

Post by muratsu »

znpy wrote: post #463
dilandau wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We hear you and are eagerly looking to improve things. Joking aside, isn't this just what people should come to expect from the company that has always tried to normalize the "no support and no service" model? If these antics start causing GOOG to lose share in the browser market then they may review these policies, but I highly doubt it. At the end of the day GOOG is an ad company and publicly-traded at that. They…

> "no support and no service" model? this is one of the reasons why Google cloud will lose to AWS in the long run. AWS is customer obsessed, Google is not.

I’ve emailed and sent Linkedin msgs to 3 people who work at gcp for cloud credits. They didn’t care. AWS gave us credits + support in less than 3 days. I wish Google best of luck with their 5yr strategy. Hope their enterprise game is better than their startup one.

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

#524

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

cwhiz wrote: post #238
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have written about this recently on the Android side. https://medium.com/@lazherrera/that-one-time-google-made-it-... If you use any of the words related to the COVID-19 pandemic, they will pull your app, suspend you and ding your account.

Google has effectively created a private monopoly on any Android applications related to Covid-19. And the last time this sort of information was posted to HN the comments section was a race to see who could do the best apology for Google. This policy by Google is hurting people and businesses. Meanwhile, Apple has a similar policy but all they do is just take extra care when reviewing your app. I suggest you port yo…

Google is very explicitly limiting COVID apps to those published by reputable public health orgs:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/40578311?hl=en

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

#525

Post by tomlagier »

kelnos wrote: post #518
geofft wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing I'm sympathetic to - having fixed the bug , it's frustrating that it's not clear what the next steps are. But given that they had the bug, Chrome was absolutely in the right to deny them the first time. And while I don't like Chrome's position that they're too busy to explain to everyone what they're doing wrong, if extensions that go "oh hey, we don't actually need access to literally every website,…

I can only assume that this isn't the result of a human flagging Pushbullet like this; I expect it's an automated system. And if that automated system can make a decision to flag the extension, it could also include in the email specifically what caused that flagging to happen. At this point I'm really starting to become unsympathetic to the idea that they can't tell you what you're doing wrong because it'll enable p…

Sure, it's anti-social. But is it more or less anti-social than running a huge software platform that advertises the ways to exploit itself?

I think it's a very interesting question. Who is more deserving of a good experience - uninformed users who might get taken advantage of by malicious extensions, or developers for the platform, who definitely do get taken advantage of by virtue of running afoul of rules they can't read?

Even if the average damage to a user is very low, the ratio of users to developers is massive.

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

#526

Post by singron »

geofft wrote: post #488
legitster wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the majority of plugins will need to access all websites. Just looking at my list of plugins: - EditThisCookie - ResourceOverride - Ad blocker - Grammarly - LastPass I absolutely expect these to work regardless of website. It seems perfectly reasonable for this to be the default behavior.

And both Grammarly and LastPass have had security bugs that let any website worm their way into the extension and access all the data from the extension (anything you've ever typed, for Grammarly, and all your passwords, for LastPass). Extensions with wide-ranging access are useful, and there's a reason Chrome has support for it, but they're also very very hard to get right, even if your entire business is writing a…

BTW the 6 extension whitelist is for Firefox Preview. The normal firefox app doesn't have a whitelist.

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

#527

Post by solidasparagus »

calmchaos wrote: post #187

Those rejection emails are most likely sent by an AI. If you reply back and ask them to specify exactly what is wrong, you'll get the same generic email back. Ask again, and they'll send the same generic response without any details or comments written by a human. They simply can't specify the problem at all. That's how you know you are talking with an AI, not a human. The correct way to respond to those rejection em…

> when AI systems get more common, this will be a common nightmare for regular people

I'm not sure. We've had automated phone customer service systems forever, but companies that in any way care about their customers still let you escalate to a human.

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

#528

Post by fenomas »

geofft wrote: post #403

Uh, yikes: > 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…

> ... an amazingly huge oversight ... a point in favor of the review process

This seems like a rosy interpretation. It's not actually clear whether http permissions really are the reason the extension got flagged, and the fact that fixing them didn't affect the review feedback implies that the process isn't working the way you're imagining.

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

#529

Post by rpdillon »

moron4hire wrote: post #504
_jal wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule still applies: if you build your business on someone else's property, don't act surprised when they they casually destroy you. It has happened again and again and again. Building for FB or Google is you making yourself their serf, and you will be allowed to exist at their whim.

What business short of The Principality of Sealand's data warehousing is not "built on someone else's property"? Even a brick-and-mortar business needs to appease the taxman.

It's a matter of degree, I imagine. Some approaches expose one to this risk to a greater degree than others. The highest risk might be placing an app or extension into a walled-off store controlled by a single company with sole authority over what is listed there.

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

#530

Post by dilandau »

znpy wrote: post #463
dilandau wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We hear you and are eagerly looking to improve things. Joking aside, isn't this just what people should come to expect from the company that has always tried to normalize the "no support and no service" model? If these antics start causing GOOG to lose share in the browser market then they may review these policies, but I highly doubt it. At the end of the day GOOG is an ad company and publicly-traded at that. They…

> "no support and no service" model? this is one of the reasons why Google cloud will lose to AWS in the long run. AWS is customer obsessed, Google is not.

It's so difficult to imagine a) getting ahold of someone at Google who can actually help you, and b) having some sense of assurance that they will actually help you.

"Google deleted my X" posts always rise to the top on HN because they elicit a strong emotional response from developers. I think it's worthwhile to reflect on why that happens. For me, it's because I absolutely despise seeing an algorithm have control over an individual's livelihood. This may be part of the Google mythos? Or it may simply be that they make their real money selling ads, and allocate support resources accordingly.

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