A fun related issue with the Chrome Web Store is that you can submit random gibberish to their DMCA takedown form and they'll pull an extension down anyway. Then they take upwards of 4 weeks to process counter-notices and refuse to fulfill their obligation to provide the identity of the reporter so you can sue them.
Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
111–120 of 187 posts
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#112Happened to my own extension this week too ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu ), except without warning - especially frustrating since I've been developing it for nearly 2 years and Chrome no longer allows users to easily install anything from sources other than their Chrome store. May end up having to port it to Firefox, except there's so much inconsistencies in CSS and webextensions between the browsers it would take a month or more. It's quite frustrating how these walled gardens can easily destroy years of work at someone's whim.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#113It's interesting to observe current landscape of app delivery, previously it was just binaries or sources on developer's site now it's shifting to centralized model in the name of protecting users from malicious actors. I wonder if there is a way to have a cookie (developers don't need to worry about random behavior of your centralized owner) and eat it too (fight malware).
Isn't signing supposed to solve some of that? You sign the binaries you host on your site, and the OS checks to make sure the signature is valid. (Maybe against a non-profit "Let's Sign".) If it's a valid signature, then you know it was signed by someone your OS trusts. Ideally, the OS would not trust signatures from malicious actors.
I've never been involved with that kind of thing, so I'm just guessing. Feel free to correct me.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#114In another thread[1] on HN today there was discussion over developers selling out their web extensions to marketing corporations which end up filling them with tracking scripts and malware. Someone suggested that google should be much more aggressive at filtering out said extensions, and one of the responses was a sarcastic comment over a future article about Google attacking extension developers and the free web. An…
The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.
> Google is impossible to talk to
Talking costs money, a lot of money, far more than computers.
It seems that Google One will have paid support, so your problem is solved!
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
It's called Google Takeout[1]. Use it. Download all of your data. Back it up in a place you trust. [1] http://takeout.google.com
Takeout is great, but it has one major flaw. There is no way to download only data that has changed after a specified date, i.e no incremental backups.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#116I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Obviously, the reason for banning the extension is that it prevents Google from tracking our clicks (I'm surprised it took them so long!) But they can't clearly spell out the reason as it would make them look bad, so they just used some template and try to sweep it under the carpet. Now that it's on HN it's no longer so easy to ignore, so I'm really curious to see what happ…
There's a much more obvious reason: the OP's extension presumably requested permissions to inject scripts to google.com. This is a very common pattern for malicious extensions, which can use that permission to hijack the user's Google session, or to inject third-party ads into Google search result pages. Coupled with the lack of information on the extension page, it looked risky.
If it's really so, and it's just an "AI mistake", let's see how quickly Google discovers it and apologizes to the author.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
That's what I do with Google Drive? If I were to get banned from Google, I'd still have my folder as a backup which I can then upload to Dropbox or whatever alternative. If I were to lose my folder (My hard drive went bust!) my folder is one resync away. What is the problem you have with photos, and videos in that sense? Or are you talking about the Free "Google Photo" thing for lower resolution images?
Careful with Google Docs & Sheets though. The Google Docs files you see in your local folder are only links, no content.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
I developed such a service some time ago, but it's impossible to find any market for it. The non-technical people say "but I have it on Google already?!" and the technical people say "I just created a DO droplet and configured backup to Backblaze, easy and cheap!!".
I find both options to be not ideal, since I'd like a simple, secure and safe way of storing my pictures. But that's the way the market is.
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.
This petrifies me. Google provides an incredibly easy way for me to capture all data that I care about. Getting photos and videos of my kids growing up and keeping them for years is trivial with Google. And in one little error it can all disappear with no recourse. I continue to struggle today to find a silver bullet solution for someone like me who just wants to hurl money somewhere and say, "use this money to guara…
There's no silver bullet replacement for the Google ecosystem. However there are plenty of choices for many important services such as Email, file/ photo storage, contacts / calendars, etc. You just gotta take the plunge!
Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can
#120Isn't that extension going straight against Google's ability to track what users are clicking on, i.e. against their core business? Maybe the warning wording is cumbersome or opaque, but what would the author expect? Company not protecting their turf? The only surprising thing is that they did it in this unimaginative hidden fashion, not fitting their friendly progressive image.
The surprising thing is that they let the extension exist for so long. Google makes most of their money from ads. If you interfere with that then of course you'll be in trouble.
Then why are there still ad blocking extensions? Wouldn't uBlock Origin interfere way more than this extension?