Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

sites.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 84 posts

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#51

Post by ubercow13 »

el_duderino wrote: post #48
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

You'll be back man. Trust me. I've tried numerous times to go back to FF, but you enjoy the speed + ridiculous amount of available popular snooping extensions more than anything. I know you're in a different state of mind atm, but you will be back to Chrome within a couple weeks.

In what way is firefox still slower than chrome? Just, IME that hasn't been the case for ages now

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#52

Post by fidotron »

Xdes wrote: post #49
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

Install Chromium. It's chrome without the spyware. https://download-chromium.appspot.com/

But that doesn't solve this problem.

At some point Chromium is going to get forked by someone in a similar way to how Firefox emerged from Mozilla because Google's actions around it are simply too isolationist.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#53

Post by sergiotapia »

el_duderino wrote: post #48
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

You'll be back man. Trust me. I've tried numerous times to go back to FF, but you enjoy the speed + ridiculous amount of available popular snooping extensions more than anything. I know you're in a different state of mind atm, but you will be back to Chrome within a couple weeks.

I have an i7 3770K 16GB DDR3 RAM and an SSD - any performance difference I may or may not perceive between the browsers is negligible.

At this point I cannot in good faith support a company such as Google.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#54

Post by epmatsw »

el_duderino wrote: post #48
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

You'll be back man. Trust me. I've tried numerous times to go back to FF, but you enjoy the speed + ridiculous amount of available popular snooping extensions more than anything. I know you're in a different state of mind atm, but you will be back to Chrome within a couple weeks.

Snooping extensions?

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#55

Post by nsmartt »

el_duderino wrote: post #48
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

You'll be back man. Trust me. I've tried numerous times to go back to FF, but you enjoy the speed + ridiculous amount of available popular snooping extensions more than anything. I know you're in a different state of mind atm, but you will be back to Chrome within a couple weeks.

Coming back to Firefox from Chromium was a wonderful experience for me. The majority of extensions I used on Chromium were inferior to their Firefox counterparts, due largely to limitations of the extension API. Aside from that, load speeds are fine, the devtools are phenomenal, and everything is great. I actually enjoy using my browser.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#56

Post by chii »

please correct me if i m wrong, but is the only way to work around this is to unpack the extension and use the developer mode?

Or did i just miss something easy - like turning a flag on somewhere? There are a few critical extensions, like youtube center (and a couple i've written myself) that aren't on the store.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#57

Post by doesnt_know »

blueskin_ wrote: post #20
octo_t wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real analogy is that we're taking away pencils because writing in the wrong book can cause you to lose all your money and cause months of problems. And these books are disguised as your own diary, cookbooks, maps and the TV guide.

No, it's like taking away books because you can give yourself a papercut, or pencils because you can stab yourself with one - if you use common sense, you won't.

As someone who has worked in the mobile pc support industry, what HN users would call "common sense" isn't really that common. I don't think developers and power users truly understand how common the huge gap is between them and non-technical users. I've given sessions on things as simple as mouse movement and basic GUI file management with drag and drop is a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely do not support "walled gardens" that are now becoming common and I don't think they are the solution to this problem. Power should always be left in the hands of the user, the solution is education. This is of course a social issue and one of gigantic scale. There are so many strong political hurdles to overcome that I'm not surprised that the industry has taken the approach it currently has.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#58

Post by pavanky »

Not sure if everyone is reading the entire article. Here are two relevant points.

> we’re enforcing the following changes starting in Chrome 33 Beta and stable channels for Windows

> Users can only install extensions hosted in the Chrome Web store, except for installs via enterprise policy or developer mode

This only affects Windows. Users who want to install extensions can still do so but the process has been made a little bit more explicit (i.e. do it via developer mode).

It sounds like this step was done to protect naive users who are not aware they are downloading malicious extensions.

Please point out if I am wrong in my assumptions.

Re: Google enforcing Web store only extensions for Chrome

#60

Post by skrowl »

Xdes wrote: post #49
sergiotapia wrote: post #47

Yep, this is the last straw for me. The final drop of water that overflowed the cup. I'm switching back to Firefox and will make a conscious decision to start deleting all my Google data. The tin foil conspiracy theorists were right all along it seems, I'll do my best to support companies that fight for my privacy and are open source. Firefox, I'm sorry I ever left you - happy to be back.

Install Chromium. It's chrome without the spyware. https://download-chromium.appspot.com/

Or just continue using firefox instead!
Post reply on HN