Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to donate to charities while on Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to donate to charities while on Amazon

#31

Post by giarc » Tue, Nov 12, 2013, 2:31 AM UTC

ancarda wrote: post #30

I hadn't heard of Amazon Smile until now. Why doesn't Amazon do this for every transaction? Would it hurt business to give 0.5% to charities automatically?

Amazon already operates at very small margins (http://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin), so any amount given to charity hurts the bottom line.

Re: Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to donate to charities while on Amazon

#32

Post by jhaimson » Tue, Nov 12, 2013, 2:41 AM UTC

kcorbitt wrote: post #7

This is a great cause. Just one concern: I understand the desire to quantify the difference you're making in the world, but seeing the counter that (currently) says "66 redirects have been made with this extension!" actually influenced me to not install the extension. It seems like the implementation of that could easily leak the list of things I look at on Amazon to you or others, and it shouldn't need to "phone hom…

Decided to get rid of this tracking entirely. The newest update doesn't make any calls to any server to deal with concerns over privacy.

Re: Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to donate to charities while on Amazon

#33

Post by jschlatter » Wed, Nov 13, 2013, 12:40 AM UTC

dgorges wrote: post #11

I tried your extension but it caused Chrome to get stuck in an infinite redirection loop. I used the eBook link to amazon.com on this page: http://37signals.com/remote/

I made a very similar extension last week (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/always-smile/fpaap...) and encountered this issue, too. You can resolve it by going to http://smile.amazon.com and choosing your charity. After that, the extension should work as expected.

Re: Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to donate to charities while on Amazon

#34

Post by BriBriCooper » Wed, Nov 13, 2013, 7:22 AM UTC

I do love the idea of this. Even immediately downloaded it to my torch browser, but I did want some input before actually using it. Seems like there is some hesitation. How safe is this? And will it be bad for Amazon or the charities involved?