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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

#41

Post by jabroni_salad »

potamic wrote: post #23
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…

Did you see what the tracking code does? If possible, it'll be useful to get access to this.

I am having trouble finding it now but I used to use a Picture in Picture extension that just made the controls more apparent (I use Brave and you have to do a menu dive for it by default). The extension had been featured by google when I added it.

At some point they signed on with a monetization scheme that:

- Redirected you through its sales attribution url any time you accessed a store (which bounced you to the site's front page instead of your search result)

- Rearranged your search results to put its affiliated stores at the top

- Marketed itself mainly to retailers as an ad network with no mention of browser extensions anywhere.

If it werent for the annoying redirect I probably would have never noticed that something was wrong.

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

#43

Post by creato »

issafram wrote: post #42

Google would prefer to focus on limiting ad blockers with V3 instead of protecting users from these extensions.

V3 reduces the damage extensions can do to users. Complain about the impact to ad blockers if you want but this point is nonsense.

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

#44

Post by malfist »

dylan604 wrote: post #28
malfist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2k seems abysmally low to throw away your labor of love and compromise your morals. At least in the US

you're making some assumptions that every dev has morals, and that some unscrupulous dev didn't build the thing specifically in hopes of getting this offer

Sure, that's possible, and from a cynical perspective seems likely to have happened. But if I was unscrupulous, there seems to be a lot easier paths to money than making a product, offering it for free, and hoping someone will offer to buy it from you to corrupt it.

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

#45

Post by dylan604 »

malfist wrote: post #44
dylan604 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're making some assumptions that every dev has morals, and that some unscrupulous dev didn't build the thing specifically in hopes of getting this offer

Sure, that's possible, and from a cynical perspective seems likely to have happened. But if I was unscrupulous, there seems to be a lot easier paths to money than making a product, offering it for free, and hoping someone will offer to buy it from you to corrupt it.

Sure, but this method doesn’t come with risk of criminal charges. This is all legit shady.

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

#46

Post by ClassyJacket »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #41
potamic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see what the tracking code does? If possible, it'll be useful to get access to this.

I am having trouble finding it now but I used to use a Picture in Picture extension that just made the controls more apparent (I use Brave and you have to do a menu dive for it by default). The extension had been featured by google when I added it. At some point they signed on with a monetization scheme that: - Redirected you through its sales attribution url any time you accessed a store (which bounced you to the si…

...Was it Honey?

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

#47

Post by prettyblocks »

potamic wrote: post #23
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…

Did you see what the tracking code does? If possible, it'll be useful to get access to this.

Most of them hijack search results and do cookie stuffing.

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

#48

Post by WeylandYutani »

Over2Chars wrote: post #10
grues-dinner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 never had the illusion that Google makes their money from Pixel phones... It was always advertising.

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

#49

Post by insin »

issafram wrote: post #42

Google would prefer to focus on limiting ad blockers with V3 instead of protecting users from these extensions.

The "This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions" warning on the uBlock Origin listing is one the shadiest things on the Chrome Web Store.

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

#50

Post by miohtama »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #46
jabroni_salad wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am having trouble finding it now but I used to use a Picture in Picture extension that just made the controls more apparent (I use Brave and you have to do a menu dive for it by default). The extension had been featured by google when I added it. At some point they signed on with a monetization scheme that: - Redirected you through its sales attribution url any time you accessed a store (which bounced you to the si…

...Was it Honey?

Honey is the new Bonzi Buddy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

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