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Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

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Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#82
I maintain a paid Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom-k...) and I've had a very similar experience with the frustrating repeat automated shutdown emails, except that so far my extension hasn't been actually shut down. I'm just waiting for the day that it happens at this point. I'm surprised it has not happened before now, since my extension requires a lot of permissions to do its job.

In my case, I make a nice little side income from that extension so it would be a noticeable income hit. But I'm not sure of anything I can really do to prevent it from being shut down if and when Google's robots decide the time has come.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#83
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your best course of action is to drop chrome support, and make your extension as good as possible and make a point of marketing that it's firefox only. Most won't do it due to worrying about market share, but alas IMO it's the best option available

I use Firefox personally and originally made the thing for myself. I added Chrome support because Chrome is much more popular (not far from ten times more popular these days :() and people I would like to use this, eg friends and family, mostly use Chrome. I couldn't ask them to switch browsers for my little side project. I have to co-operate with Google's bureaucracy. For what it's worth, so far it seems like Mozill…

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to promote Firefox to your friends and family as "simply the better choice" irrespective of your own interests.

When Chrome was better, I suggested friends and family use Chrome. Now I think most people would benefit from using Firefox as their primary driver.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#84

It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch questions like: 1. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2. No repeal process At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and understand mentality of other people. It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us? What kind of programmers wrote su…

>>What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates

The Human mind has an infinite capacity to justify any manner of things as "just doing my job" or "just following orders"

This has been seen in all industry, in all types of roles and at all times in history

There is nothing more dangerous than a group of people "just doing their jobs"

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#85
There are people inside Google that must have thought this review and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have gotten built otherwise.

Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response inside Google?

I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world consequences of choices like this into who is empowered to make choices going forward.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#86
post #55
post #38

Maybe someday everyone will realize that google isn't a company that provides services to users, it's a data theft company. They don't really care about bugs or frustrations because they aren't in the business of providing things to you. You are not their customer. The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. They are an advertising compa…

> they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers. Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of support?

The last numbers I saw (2016-ish) put Advertising at 86% of Google's revenue (Or perhaps Alphabet's revenue? I'll admit that all that stuck in my head was this 86.)

If those numbers are still anywhere near close, Google is an advertising company with some interesting side hustles. Just because Harley Davidson sell t-shirts, doesn't mean you'd describe them as anything other than a motorcycle company.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#87
post #33

It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch questions like: 1. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2. No repeal process At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and understand mentality of other people. It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us? What kind of programmers wrote su…

I just created a Google Voice account for the first time. A few hours later I asked 3 different friends to send me a text message to see if it worked. I didn't get any of them or any warning that it takes time for the number to activate. I tried again the next day, same results. That was 4-5 days ago, and still nothing. I'm abandoning Google Voice because I assume Google has abandoned it. It's not like there's anyone…

Voice was a really frustrating product for me because it was so clearly years ahead of its time and also ignored by Google for so long that everyone else caught up and passed them.

In 2010 I was able to have one number ring multiple phones, automatic transcription of voicemail, text people from a web browser (!), switch between network providers without having to deal with number porting, it was great.

What killed it for me was that MMS was silently dropped, no images, but worse group SMS was handled by MMS so if people added you to group chats you just wouldn't get any of the messages and they would have no indication that you weren't getting them.

This went unsolved for years.

Eventually iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook - basically everyone else took this market. Then Google started some anemic work on it again, along the way making and killing a bunch of other chat products that all sucked in different ways.

Along with google plus and cloud, this is probably one of their biggest strategic failures.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is based on Chromium

But it's not chrome, hence not controlled by Google, and not bound by their policies regarding what extensions you may or may not install.

I think the parents comment's argument is that since it's based on chromium it also can eventually be forced to acquiesce, so any chromium-based browser is just a stop gap solution.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#89
post #85

There are people inside Google that must have thought this review and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have gotten built otherwise. Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response inside Google? I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world conseq…

One thing I've noticed working for a variety of companies is that highly profitable companies generally do not have consequences for even fairly dramatic failures, both in terms of how they treat customers and how they treat employees. They simply have too much money, so there's little need to do so.

In a tiny company, a large failure can easily be the end of the company, so they're far more motivated to care about things like customer happiness, etc.

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