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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

#101

Post by rubyn00bie »

vosper wrote: post #55
Awelton wrote: 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?

Lol. You get different support yes, but it’s equally as shitty if not more so.

I’ve been an enterprise customer of Googles services. When you have a problem simply finding the link, to the obscure dashboard login, to post an issue may take hours. I’m not even joking. Like Google is built to prevent you from using it discover useful support pages with contact information. “Account Executives” otherwise known as sales people, provide zero support after the contract is signed and I mean zero.

Once you write in, you wait, and hope. It’s kind of like filing a radar with Apple but a bit shittier because you have still idiotic, naive, hope you’ll get a reply or help.

If you ever do get a reply it’s likely a bot. If you ever have to disagree chances are it won’t be seen or acknowledged. Google is by far the worst service provider on the planet if you ever have an issue.

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

#102

Post by renewiltord »

leonardteo wrote: post #16

I feel you... We had similar issues with the Google Play store for the ArtStation App ( https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation-... ), it simply got taken down and appealing continually got rejected. It was only after the issue got picked up as the top story on Hacker News and other sites that exposed the dysfunctional nature of their moderation that finally Google subtly changed their policy so t…

Oh I knew Apple applied the prude-policy to their store. I did not realize Google did too. Interesting.

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

#103

Post by renewiltord »

amirathi wrote: post #43
deadwing0 wrote: post #19

Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the moderation (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the Chrome Store because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds of people to do it manually? I know it's easy to say "Google doesn't care about you," and generally it as a company may not care, but they also are not in the business of putting us out of business. It feels like to me that they have just be…

It's clear that Google don't want to hire humans and run customer support centers. According to reports, this has bit them in GCP adoption as well. That's fine but at least have a human review before taking disastrous actions like taking down extensions, lockdown Gmail accounts. If you can't afford even that at least have an appeal process where human would review the case. If you can't make the economics work even f…

GCP does have support engineers who work with you on things.

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

#104

Post by Awelton »

vosper wrote: post #55
Awelton wrote: 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 point of that statement was not to say that they don't provide those services at all, the point was that providing those services aren't their "thing". There is not a paid tier of any google product that will stop them from spying on you. Any payment you make is just to subsidize their spying so they get your data at little or no cost to themselves. If you are paying for google services you are not only giving them your data, you are paying for the privilege.

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

#105

Post by superkuh »

vezycash wrote: post #26

Developers evangelized Android and Chrome in their early days - created the monsters. People making Chrome only sites are feeding the monster. Instead of Kozmos shutting down, the best revenge would making a firefox extension and getting their users to switch.

This wouldn't be a problem if browsers weren't walled gardens that are controlled by corporations instead of the users running them. Yes there are security issues with ignorant users doing things. But sometimes the fix causes a problem worse than the original.

Firefox and Chrome both don't let users install any add-on without their permission. Switching to Firefox ecosystem just means the leash is longer (and the protection is fake because of their automated signing portal).

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

#106

Post by komali2 »

michaelterryio wrote: post #99
Awelton wrote: 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…

This reminds me of when sports fans say things like, those odds are meaningless, they’re just set by bookies to get action. True from a naively pedantic POV, but also ignores that betting odds happen to end up efficient also. Like saying shopkeeps set prices to drum up business and aren’t subject to the principles of supply and demand. Google is an advertising company, but as part of its strategic goals it develops a…

It doesn't matter what brilliant ground level people want if they don't get to do anything about it because of pressure from management.

I have seen this first-hand. I bet you have too. A brilliant user friendly idea stays at the bottom of the product log, as middle and upper management product asks get piled on top of it, pushing it deeper and deeper.

Sure, I guess you could donate the small amount of free time you get to your employer and do it after work, but I can't think of anything more demotivating than working for free for a company with revenue in the hundreds of millions.

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

#108

Post by komali2 »

gonehome wrote: post #78
aboringusername wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, the value proposition proposed by "the cloud", whomever that may be (MS/Google/Apple et al), is quite the temptation. Seriously, I am slowly and surely de-googling, such as storing all data locally (if I need offsite, I use encrypted backups). My calendar now uses caldav on a raspberry pi, my home network uses ethernet for fast data flow to a portable drive and I am using a web browser for many applications…

The only main Google service I still used was Gmail (and occasionally search when DDG doesn't return something immediately useful). I'd seen comments about Fastmail over the years, but moving seemed like it would be a hassle. With more at home pandemic time I decided to just do it and have been super impressed. The Fastmail docs are really good, setting up DNS to use my custom domain had explicit steps and pictures f…

I went through a similar process during quarantine, but for bluehost.

I found the process of changing emails over meant I also was able to make Pass entries for them (another way I'm taking control of my data), and at the same time delete my account for websites I don't need anymore. It's been very cleansing.

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

#109

Post by achillesheels »

aboringusername wrote: post #60
Awelton wrote: 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…

Thing is, the value proposition proposed by "the cloud", whomever that may be (MS/Google/Apple et al), is quite the temptation. Seriously, I am slowly and surely de-googling, such as storing all data locally (if I need offsite, I use encrypted backups). My calendar now uses caldav on a raspberry pi, my home network uses ethernet for fast data flow to a portable drive and I am using a web browser for many applications…

My wake up call came in May 2018 when I was starting a cannabis dispensary YouTube channel and they decided to terminate all content creators. But this also included the gmail account. Completely. Flipping the switch off just like that made me realize I’m an idiot for using Gmail as my “central” email address (I’ve navigated all my critical emails offline and now use my own email server.)

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

#110

Post by sneak »

This isn’t a Google issue. This is a platforms-that-can-enable-censorship issue.

Google is just an instance of the class. All of the instances of the class are subject to this problem. Fixing Google’s policies will not eliminate this danger.

Censorship platforms that do not permit the user an escape hatch (iOS App Store, I’m looking at you) are ultimately able to decide what we see, what we read, what we are allowed to think. They can disappear entire bodies of work without even a notification.

Do not use censorship platforms.

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