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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

#381

Post by RonanTheGrey »

monadic2 wrote: post #298
lonelappde wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User friendly features are only incentivized in a competitive environment. Until Firefox or Edge catches up in both performance and implementation compatibility to make Chrome-first sites work, extension support isn't incentivized

Tbh I can’t even think of a place where competition solves user-friendliness—user friendly software is highly uncommon in commercial software, let alone more broadly (i’m eying you, canonical). There are a large number of user-hostile behaviors that stretch across industries: ad-funded software, app stores pushing microtransactions, wildly inconsistent interfaces and behaviors across DOM-driven software, opt-out beha…

I'd hazard to say that what you're describing (which I agree with) is true actually because in most spheres, there really ISN'T meaningful competition.

Building software is hard, generally, and takes time, generally. Just because you can throw up a set of microservices in a day doesn't mean you can build a properly competing product that quickly. And as time goes on, the standard of competition gets higher and the barrier to entry gets higher, because user expectations grow over time. So most software isn't competitive.

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

#382

Post by TylerE »

acituan wrote: post #357
scottrice wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to the trademark issue: > and we’d have no choice but to do all that because you have to enforce trademarks or you lose them. They aren't threatening him for the fun of it, this is classic trademark stuff. Also the "solution" he offered them was: > Yeah, you can buy it for $30.000 for the hassle of giving up with my pet project for bunch of corporate dicks Would _you_ give this guy $30,000, after he call…

> but Azer was super unprofessional and nasty during those interactions Does he even have to be “professional“? Even though two of the parties involved happen to be corporations, he owes no allegiance to them and the exchange does not take place in a corporate context. I mean, we are talking about corporate overreach, why should we be assessing his words by corporate standards? “Professional” usually means “don’t sho…

Does he have to be? No.

Can others judge him harshly for said decision? Yes.

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

#383

Post by pvg »

znpy wrote: post #354
pvg wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't call it 'heavy handed'. I'm just correcting your assertion that PB didn't have unnecessary and overly-broad permissions. This is in their writeup.

This might be okay as long as you give clear and specific points to correct. But Google just said "you're asking too much permissions". After the first fixes the extension got rejected again, without explanation.

I'm not really trying to re-litigate the whole PB thing. It's just not the case that they got dinged for nothing which is what the comment I replied to was suggesting.

And the other (I think more important) point was that we know even less about whatever happened to Kozmos.

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

#384

Post by RonanTheGrey »

georgeecollins wrote: post #200
iforgotpassword wrote: post #63

I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-programmers who think they can solve anything with machine learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly flagged and when a human finally reviewed…

The other explanation is that they don't really want users to have most browser extensions. The browser extensions either become features that google wants to embed in the browser, or things they don't want, for business reasons. In either case it is better if the extension dies after a year or so. BTW, this doesn't have to be a conscious choice of anyone at Google, it could just be the way the incentives turn out.

I think it's exactly this.

Chrome supported/promoted its extensibility early on because it was seen as a competitive feature when compared to IE and Firefox at the time. At the time, FF supported a huge library of extensions, and Chrome's job was to eat FF's market share (and IE's). Thus, extensions were an obvious thing for them.

Now, extensions present pretty much nothing but problems for Google:

* Features that compete with Android * Features that compete with their own offerings, like Pushbullet * Features that actively harm their offerings, like adblockers * Features that actively harm their enterprise customers, like anti-paywalls

There's NO upside now for Chrome to support extensions, and ALL downside. They certainly don't need them in order to keep browser share. Too many people use it now.

By the way that description is one aspect of a monopoly (no, I don't want to start that discussion. Just pointing out that that behavior isn't possible in a competitive environment).

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

#385

Post by gwillz »

stevenjohns wrote: post #339
Justsignedup wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy made a very valid point: We must pursue our trademarks or risk losing them. We must. So can we make this amicable instead of hostile? The maintainer could have requested things like "Okay can I make some blog posts and you help me with some SEO to make sure people are aware of the changes to my project name?" etc. Sounds like Kik was willing to be reasonable and help where they could. Clearly they could have…

“We must” is nonsense on the part of Kik. That’s part of the corporate b/s where people make it seem like things are “out of our hands.” If he was releasing a messenger app called KikAss, then sure, they “must” enforce the Kik trademark. But if I release a brand of shoes called Kik, with an api that allows users to poll how many steps a user has taken that day, that’s not a trademark violation. Trademark violations r…

This is it, really.

Not long ago I was involved in a company that defended their trademark. The other group said to us 'f- you' and refused to comply. They then continued to do marketing and interviews with our brand name and an almost identical logo. It's like they were trying to dig a hole.

So that behaviour actually just created more evidence of infringement. We contacted their partners and explained the situation and they started pulling their support. They lost half their board members. So eventually their own lawyer said "Hey guys, we really should comply." and that was it.

No money exchanged hands and we only dropped 30k into a lawyer. I assume they sunk money into rebranding, lawyers, new partners, and a whole bunch of things because they were being petty.

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

#386

Post by tech234a »

geza wrote: post #245
lonelappde wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Google banned sideloading unapproved extensions on Windows and Mac. https://developer.chrome.com/apps/external_extensions

I meant distribution as a zip file that you can load in developer mode, like the installation instructions for Bypass Paywall ( https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome ). It's not a very user friendly installation process but it still works. But yes, CRX-based sideloading no longer works on Chrome.

I believe CRX-based sideloading is still a Chromium feature. For example, if I turn on developer mode in Vivaldi, I can drag a CRX onto the extensions page and install it without a problem.

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

#387

Post by sumedh »

otterley wrote: post #276
roadbeats wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you" In response to a threat starting with "We don’t mean to be a dick about it" and ending with "our trademark lawyers are going to be banging on your door and taking down your accounts and stuff like that", I did say "fuck you" to Kik. If that makes me the character in your mind, enjoy your imagination.

About twenty years ago, I learned a lesson the hard way I received a much more strongly worded cease-and-desist letter. I responded much the same way as you (though without the salty language), and a few weeks later, I got slapped with a multi-million dollar lawsuit for copyright infringement. You're lucky you were treated as nicely as you were. It could have been a whole lot worse. Lessons learned: 1. Hire an attorn…

So what happened with with the lawsuit in the end?

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

#388

Post by RonanTheGrey »

calpaterson wrote: post #50
kyleee wrote: 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 got my retired mother to switch to Firefox without her hardly noticing the difference. And she's happier now that she gets fewer ads.

I think we as developers overestimate the resistance to switching.

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

#389

Post by guug »

stevenjohns wrote: post #339
Justsignedup wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy made a very valid point: We must pursue our trademarks or risk losing them. We must. So can we make this amicable instead of hostile? The maintainer could have requested things like "Okay can I make some blog posts and you help me with some SEO to make sure people are aware of the changes to my project name?" etc. Sounds like Kik was willing to be reasonable and help where they could. Clearly they could have…

“We must” is nonsense on the part of Kik. That’s part of the corporate b/s where people make it seem like things are “out of our hands.” If he was releasing a messenger app called KikAss, then sure, they “must” enforce the Kik trademark. But if I release a brand of shoes called Kik, with an api that allows users to poll how many steps a user has taken that day, that’s not a trademark violation. Trademark violations r…

> Trademarks require intent to mislead

Is this a legal requirement?

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

#390

Post by Hello71 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #113
Hello71 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gaslighting doesn't mean hiding.

Hiding = post is invisible to you and everyone else Gaslighting = post is visible to you, and unbeknownst to you, invisible to everyone else

gaslighting also doesn't mean lying, or cheating, or fraud. it involves some of these things, but that doesn't mean that all hiding and lying is gaslighting. to quote wiktionary:

To manipulate someone psychologically such that they question their own memory, perception and sanity, thereby evoking in them low self-esteem and cognitive dissonance. The verb sense derives from the 1938 stage play Gas Light, in which a husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment.

in what way does hiding one's post cause them to "question their own memory, perception and sanity"?

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