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Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#151

Post by animationwill »

jfoster wrote: post #148

From the email: "When we launched the Chrome Web Store 11 years ago, there weren't a lot of ways for our developers to take payment from users. Today, there is a thriving ecosystem of payment providers offering a far more diverse set of features than a single provider could hope to. Now that our developers have so many great options to choose from, we can comfortably sunset our own payments integration." My takeaway:…

>> As options increase, expect Google to "comfortably sunset" their solutions.

Read some of the other comments here. This is anything other than “comfortably” and will create a lot of pain & churn for Both the devs and users

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#152

Post by dx87 »

adonese wrote: post #142
zmmmmm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno ... Google shuts things down independent of revenue metrics as far as I can tell. They seem to set a bar somewhere around "is this the next Gmail" and if the answer is no they shut it down regardless of how profitable it may be. They want a few giant businesses, not a hundred small ones. I wish they would look at spinning these things out because many of them would make entirely viable independent entities ev…

Inbox should have met that metric. I think it is a culture thing, it's far more easier to deprecate any product than to keep supporting it

I'm still mad about Inbox. I moved over to it from Gmail because they said that it was going to be the future of Gmail when it launched. Instead, they abandoned it.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#153

Post by can16358p »

jfrunyon wrote: post #136
can16358p wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm. We have a normal Google doc (nothing super fancy) that spans about 10 pages at most, and when I scroll past about 8th page in Safari, scrolling becomes almost unusually sluggish and everything starts lagging.

Honestly... I don't know if that's intentional; Drive 'files' get really laggy really quick in Chrome too.

Don't know, maybe not. It works flawless in mobile Safari, for example. Even though it's not intentional, I'm pretty much sure Google would be more inclined to say "hey use Chrome" instead of fixing it for Safari.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#154

Post by PascLeRasc »

londons_explore wrote: post #141

Google sent an email to all Chrome Web Store app developers about this... Despite only a tiny fraction having ever used the payment system. Was that just carelessness? Why not only notify users of the feature you are about to deprecate? Do they not have records of which app developers have used the payments API?

Thanks for letting us know about the email, Gmail marked it as "unimportant" so I wasn't notified.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#155

Post by single_source »

nsgi wrote: post #128
single_source wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I've made my money back so I'm not as concerned about the $25, but there goes any chance of growing the revenue in any meaningful way. I am getting a kick out of all the people here saying that "no one pays for extensions". I've consistently made $50-100 from mine with no marketing whatsoever.

Did you have to do much support?

I get an occasional request for new features maybe once a month. If I can add them in a few minutes I do, otherwise I tell them it isn't supported and won't be. So basically, no.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#156

Post by skinnymuch »

jfoster wrote: post #148

From the email: "When we launched the Chrome Web Store 11 years ago, there weren't a lot of ways for our developers to take payment from users. Today, there is a thriving ecosystem of payment providers offering a far more diverse set of features than a single provider could hope to. Now that our developers have so many great options to choose from, we can comfortably sunset our own payments integration." My takeaway:…

Why did you quote comfortably sunset? Are you indicating that this is anything but that? It isn’t clear.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#157

Post by skinnymuch »

dx87 wrote: post #152
adonese wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inbox should have met that metric. I think it is a culture thing, it's far more easier to deprecate any product than to keep supporting it

I'm still mad about Inbox. I moved over to it from Gmail because they said that it was going to be the future of Gmail when it launched. Instead, they abandoned it.

How much of Inbox’s features were moved over to Gmail? Will more be moved over? I never used Inbox.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#158

Post by skinnymuch »

stickfigure wrote: post #26

The interesting thing here is that a commercial marketplace for browser extensions failed. That seems surprising - surely a marketplace for extensions to the most popular browser on the planet could bring in some revenue?! Is it just that nobody paid for things? Presumably they're going to keep running the chrome web store, so isn't a cut of paymens "free money" to them? Is there some big cost to this I'm not seeing,…

A small fraction of people including tech people know you can charge for browser extensions as a one off. I’m still not sure if you can actually. I’ve never seen an integrated payment for an extension. At best something like a SaaS with focus on browser extension.

The amount of profit from this has to be so tiny for Google or any mid cap tech company since no one really knows about it.

I made a comment with some upvoteS here a week or two ago about my hopes that the new Safari could maybe usher in an era of browser extensions being seen more as apps than current status quo but without the ridiculous high priced recurring prices being added more and more.

IE paying $1+ one time, or $1-3/mo, or $10-25/year being a not uncommon situation would be great in my opinion. Both stamp out the rampant data mining extensions do, legitimize extensions more, and hopefully get some indie developers paid.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#159

Post by skinnymuch »

marcinzm wrote: post #18
filoleg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to everything i read about chargebacks on Google services, they indeed don’t pay attention, they just automatically block access to any of your Google accounts and services shortly after you do a chargeback. And given the horror stories I’ve heard about trying to resolve or reverse any automated account bans by Google, I do not recommend following that route.

Yup, companies dislike charge backs and many will block you from all their services for requesting one. So don't go that route unless you never wish to use services from that company again. My wife accidentally did one for a mmorpg she plays and after 6 weeks (and dealing with support, multiple banks, etc.) it was only social media shaming that got them to unban her.

There’s been a couple of casual stuff Here and there on how no one will chargeback Amazon (or Walmart depending on demographic). Not worth the risk compared to dependency. I agree myself and ate a $125 loss from Amazon recently when it didn’t feel worth the trouble. But I’m almost any other circumstance, I would’ve charged back. I used an AMEX for the purchase too.

Similarly, until I weaned myself off using Amazon for majority of shopping, I had minor anxiety over other Amazon stuff. Like my return rate and I had 2 incidents of being sent junk instead of the couple hundred dollar electronic. I’m sure they log how often it happens to a customer and it’s possible to not be stealing but still get booted if it happens too much.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#160

Post by skinnymuch »

Mindwipe wrote: post #147
cosmie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the state, but look for verbiage related to lodging a consumer complaint. Here's[1] the one for my state. The AG office isn't necessarily writing a personalized letter, but rather forwarding your complaint and maintaining visibility into the correspondence until it's resolved. In this case, a complaint such as "Google operates a marketplace for web browser extensions. I generate revenue through this market…

I generally find the only way anyone gets Google to respond to any service issue at this point is to be lucky enough that they can make it in to a tax issue so Google legal get involved or to utter (at least vaguely credibly) the magic word antitrust. Otherwise Google effectively just bin any issues that a customer service team should fix.

Or get your issue visible on social media
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