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How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

arstechnica.com

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Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#31

Post by wbl »

alephnerd wrote: post #12
Over2Chars wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I think it's not a deep insight, but Thiel notes (in his 'zero to one' speech he gave) that Google actively pretends not to be a search advertising monopoly, and instead pretends to be a competitive technology company, in a wide range of technology fields, to "hide" their monopoly. Thiel is openly advocating monopolies, and says competition is for losers. I think he's just calling GOOG out for their marketin…

I'm not sure I buy Thiel's argument becuase plenty of their non-search businesses such as Google Cloud, GSuite, Waymo, and Verily have become pretty successful in their own right, and vertical integration is another form of monopoly that tends to cracked down on.

Vertical integration is very proconsumer as it reduces successive markups.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#32

Post by brookst »

tsunamifury wrote: post #27
whatshisface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a monopoly on sugar and traded in silver and healthcare, I would still have a monopoly on sugar.

Yea but diversification is a critical business strategy not just a marketing ploy

Yeah there are far cheaper ways to “distract” from a monopoly than building Waymo from scratch. Alleging that whole project exists only as a smokescreen is pretty conspiratorial thinking.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#33

Post by BobaFloutist »

wbl wrote: post #31
alephnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy Thiel's argument becuase plenty of their non-search businesses such as Google Cloud, GSuite, Waymo, and Verily have become pretty successful in their own right, and vertical integration is another form of monopoly that tends to cracked down on.

Vertical integration is very proconsumer as it reduces successive markups.

Until they drive competitors out of business, and then it's not. Much like the horizontal integration of, say, Walmart.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#34

Post by fuzzy_biscuit »

grues-dinner wrote: post #5
Over2Chars wrote: post #3

These rogue extensions are "surreptitiously monetizing web searches" - but doesn't Google conspicuously monetize web searches? So it seems the Google TOS bans competition in search monetization using their "open source" browser. Isn't it odd that an "open source" browser is apparently designed to provide a monopoly on search monetization by the nice people who give it to you for free? And being 80% or so of all searc…

> Peter Thiel's claim that google is a search advertising monopoly masquerading as a (competitive, non-monopoly) technology company That's not a very deep insight, it's been pretty obvious since they bought out DoubleClick in 2007.

Don't forget when Google bought Urchin in '05. It's all been a part of the same broad strategy.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#35

Post by luckylion »

donatj wrote: post #22
luckylion wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they seem personalized or do they just mass-mail every developer they can find? 100 users seem very little to go through the trouble of acquiring an extension and then push bad code. Did they ever give you an idea of what they are ready to pay?

They seem pretty generic, like spray and pray. I am sure they just scrape all the developers details from the Chrome Store and bug them all. I don't seem to have saved any of them but I do recall one offering me $6,400 for my extension because there was a small voice in the back of my head whispering "that's a lot of money..." Most of the ones wanting me to install code offer ongoing payments.

Thanks, that sounds like a lot of money. I assume they'd start negotiating once you respond and they look into it, I can't see them paying $6-10 per user. At that point, it has to be cheaper to just build extensions and let them gather a few users, right?

Wild market though, and I applaud developers who reject the offers. I'm sure that small voice becomes a lot louder if you built an extension that now has 100k users.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#36

Post by emahhh »

donatj wrote: post #13

I have two Chrome extensions in the store. They're not very popular and are really just features I wanted for my own use. I think I have less than 100 users total. At least once a week I get emails from people - offering money to add their "tracking" code - wanting to purchased the extension outright What they clearly want is access to my modest install base to push questionable code onto. I certainly am not going fo…

I also have a really small extension. I also get a lot of emails offering "help" to expand the user base through SEO and marketing.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#37

Post by diggan »

donatj wrote: post #13

I have two Chrome extensions in the store. They're not very popular and are really just features I wanted for my own use. I think I have less than 100 users total. At least once a week I get emails from people - offering money to add their "tracking" code - wanting to purchased the extension outright What they clearly want is access to my modest install base to push questionable code onto. I certainly am not going fo…

> I think I have less than 100 users total.

> At least once a week I get emails from people

My extension (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/privornot/fnpgifcbm...) currently says it has ~915 users. Usually the offers I get are in the $100-$200 range, but it's maybe once every 1-2 months I get an offer.

I'm guessing they go by keywords + user count (or something, maybe "last updated" too?) , as my extension is very country and context-specific, and I'm not getting that many offers (thankfully). More people reaching out saying thanks, which are better emails to receive anyways and some asking for the source code, which I'm happy to provide :)

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#38

Post by tsunamifury »

brookst wrote: post #32
tsunamifury wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but diversification is a critical business strategy not just a marketing ploy

Yeah there are far cheaper ways to “distract” from a monopoly than building Waymo from scratch. Alleging that whole project exists only as a smokescreen is pretty conspiratorial thinking.

I have had drinks with Peter Thiel. If you force him to answer more than one question about his theories it totally falls apart. Mostly the logic actually goes like this: oh if it doesn’t work I have the money to survive it and you don’t so I still win and claim I was right.

I wish more people understood this.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#39

Post by hansvm »

donatj wrote: post #13

I have two Chrome extensions in the store. They're not very popular and are really just features I wanted for my own use. I think I have less than 100 users total. At least once a week I get emails from people - offering money to add their "tracking" code - wanting to purchased the extension outright What they clearly want is access to my modest install base to push questionable code onto. I certainly am not going fo…

That sort of thing is part of my usual spiel against automatic updates in most scenarios (and, when that's hard, pushing back on the reasons why it's hard rather than adding automatic updates):

- What security problems are we trying to prevent with automatic updates? The worst-case would be allowing an untrusted third-party to run arbitrary code on your computer.

- How did we fix it? We allow a different untrusted third-party to run arbitrary code on our computers.

Toss in a healthy dose of developers using "security updates" to enshittify a product, or even just screwing up releases from time to time and introducing more attack vectors than they fixed, and automatic updates don't look very attractive.

Re: How hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions

#40

Post by alephnerd »

tsunamifury wrote: post #38
brookst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there are far cheaper ways to “distract” from a monopoly than building Waymo from scratch. Alleging that whole project exists only as a smokescreen is pretty conspiratorial thinking.

I have had drinks with Peter Thiel. If you force him to answer more than one question about his theories it totally falls apart. Mostly the logic actually goes like this: oh if it doesn’t work I have the money to survive it and you don’t so I still win and claim I was right. I wish more people understood this.

+1 on this.

Ime he's a walking personification of "jack of all trades, master of none".

That's the perfect trait for a VC (broad knowledge is critical to identify market trends), but it has its flaws such as extreme simplification of complex topics.

That said, you can rightfully argue that this is why you are investing in egghead founders - so they can deal with solving those problems and logic gaps.

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