Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by georgeecollins » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

mech422 wrote: post #401

georgeecollins wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given all the recent postings on HN lately about the DoJ sniffing around google re: anti-trust.... You'd think this would be a really bad time to be doing this... Isn't one of the 'main' criteria around anti-trust how a company impacts the consumer ? this sort of thing sounds harmful to the consumer (fewer choices, actively taking down products consumers use, etc.)

I agree, maybe the DoJ should ask why it is so hard to make an extension? A little pressure would act against the forces that make them decide when in doubt, shut down extension.

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

#412

Post by throwaway2048 » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #410

throwaway2048 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not so much forgotten as aggressively dismissed and mocked as tin foil hattery.

It’s almost like the companies with more money than governments and complete control over what content users see might shape the world to keep their profits high. One way to tell if a conspiracy is crazy is if it doesn’t benefit rich people. This pretty clearly passes that test.

You don't have to believe conspiracy theories to think centralization is bad. Sometimes bullshit "they" don't want you to know about is still bullshit.

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

#413

Post by throwaway2048 » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #400

bufferoverflow wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1994 Microsoft didn't arbitrarily ban applications on their OS.

They would have loved that though! I mean Steam was made as a panicked reaction when Microsoft announced its Windows store. People in the industry knew very well what they were trying to do.

Steam predates any windows app store stuff by almost a decade, it wasn't a "panicked reaction" to anything.

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

#414

Post by Silhouette » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

panic wrote: post #269

geza wrote: post #157

I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own open-source extension HabitLab ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ ) that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and every update I try to submit is rejec…

Dealing with Google these days seems a lot like dealing with an authoritarian government. To operate safely on Google's platforms, you need a friend who works at Google who can vouch for you as their over-eager police keep trying to put you in jail.

The tech giants seem to operate on a law of averages, where automating everything and having essentially zero support system for those using their services is worth it despite the (apparently quite frequent) failures that may break accounts and cost the giant some money as a result.

I've seen similar situations happen with Facebook, where entire businesses with what you might think were significant ad budgets were completely shut out of advertising on FB because its system for advertisers was broken yet again. I guess if you have a very small number of channels that are totally dominant, as Google and FB now are, you can afford to throw away a thousand here or even a million there if it saves you millions in support costs.

Whether organisations that have become so dominant should be legally allowed to do that, given the unfair adverse effect it can have on others operating in the ecosystems they create, is a different question. Just as we have laws about monopolies and limit what they can do in other contexts, maybe it's time for the handful of businesses that dominate online advertising or marketplaces to be regulated for the protection of everyone else.

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

#415

Post by neurostimulant » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

calpaterson wrote: post #29

I have a side-project that is partially a browser extension. I use a single codebase for both Firefox and Chrome. Even with my trivial side-project and a grand total of two releases so far, Google ar itrarily rejected one release for being "spammy" when there was literally a 5 line diff between it and the previous release. Thankfully just finding the depreciated dashboard and uploading an icon (the "new dashboard" do…

Man, I haven't updated my extension for years because it's already feature complete (at least for my use case) and at this point I'm afraid when I push an update, Google would outright ban it because the extension requires full access to all sites and tabs (it's an automatic tab suspension extension).

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

#416

Post by otterley » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #396

otterley wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BP, BMW, and GE (among countless others) disagree and would be happy to haul you into court to prove to you that you are wrong if you misuse their trademarks. It's easy to be an armchair HN lawyer when you have no skin in the game.

> BP, BMW, and GE (among countless others) disagree and would be happy to haul you into court to prove to you that you are wrong if you misuse their trademarks. As an attorney, do you think he was misusing the "Kik" trademark?

I know this sounds like a cop-out answer, but as an attorney, I would zealously represent my client on either side.

I don't know all the facts here, but I do know that as a practical matter, it comes down to a whole bunch of factors, among them, use in commerce, possibility of confusion, etc. But I can say that judges take a dim view of people who tell others to "fuck off" and who appear not to have a justifiable reason for using a name nor a long history of doing so.

I also know that bullies don't always win - Nissan Computer still owns nissan.com, not the motor company.

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

#417

Post by otterley » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #387

otterley wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I entered a judgment on consent and had to pay restitution to the plaintiffs over a number of years. Most expensive mistake I ever made.

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

#418

Post by codr7 » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #375

georgeecollins wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why I try very hard not to rely on Google, with the exception of Gmail. I don’t use Google extensions on Chrome, and increasingly I don’t use Chrome.

Search engine?

That's what finally started bothering me enough, I don't feel comfortable keeping my search history and email in the same basket.

I'm currently in the process of switching to protonmail.com, which has been a positive experience so far.

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

#419

Post by Larrikin » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #380

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you including the change cost here, which will be many times higher for most of the population vs. HN? Even if I thought that Firefox was a better choice, I'd recommend to my friends and family to keep using whatever they are using unless they have to switch for some reason.

What, precisely, is the cost?

Lazy web devs that only test in Chrome and maybe safari that constantly break things in other browsers. I don't mind sending the angry support email and using chrome for a single task here and there but others might.

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

#420

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

panic wrote: post #269

geza wrote: post #157

I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own open-source extension HabitLab ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ ) that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and every update I try to submit is rejec…

Dealing with Google these days seems a lot like dealing with an authoritarian government. To operate safely on Google's platforms, you need a friend who works at Google who can vouch for you as their over-eager police keep trying to put you in jail.

> Dealing with Google these days seems a lot like dealing with an authoritarian government.

It's more like dealing with a blind automaton, and that's becoming more common outside of Google, too. Automation support scales well because the fixed costs are high but the marginal cost is low, human attention scales poorly, with a high marginal cost.