Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#61

Post by city41 » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

deadwing0 wrote: post #42

city41 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t see how a healthy browser extension ecosystem would help Google. Without Google getting any real value out of it, it makes total sense they do a poor job managing it.

I somewhat agree, yet wouldn't a healthy extension ecosystem (excellent term, btw) attract more users to Chrome and in turn keep users more entwined in the larger Google ecosystem? I guess there is a cost/benefit analysis done. They put just enough effort into it to get the return or results they want. The little guys like OP (who arguably make the best content because it's open source and not full of trackers or oth…

I don’t know at all, but if I had to guess extension usage is pretty low. I’m not sure the average user really sees browser extensions as something they need. They aren’t as obvious as say mobile apps. On the flip side, extensions like Honey seem to suggest at least enough people use them to be of some worth.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#62

Post by begemotz » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #55

Awelton wrote: post #38

Maybe someday everyone will realize that google isn't a company that provides services to users, it's a data theft company. They don't really care about bugs or frustrations because they aren't in the business of providing things to you. You are not their customer. The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. They are an advertising compa…

> they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers. Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of support?

are you suggesting that if you paid, then they would not trade in your data?

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#63

Post by iforgotpassword » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-programmers who think they can solve anything with machine learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly flagged and when a human finally reviewed it we found it was a mistake each time, so maybe set a flag on this extension to double-check next time". Or maybe, have such incidents automatically bubble up to the team responsible for the automatic screening. But why do that if you're a wunderkind programmer who never makes mistakes?

Sorry, this is the only explanation I have for this, I've worked with this kind of person twice. Once they got the first version of something running they are done, no further testing, no sanity checks, no asserts or logger.warn() for "this can never happen" branches.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#64

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

Kaze404 wrote: post #8

I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever fixing it. That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me how little Google cares abou…

> These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually.

> What can we do about this?

I think you've already got it; don't use Google products. Ideally, pay for alternatives.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#65

Post by adventured » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

lykr0n wrote: post #14

Kaze404 wrote: post #8

I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever fixing it. That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me how little Google cares abou…

Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews.

> Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews.

I've had the exact opposite observation here. There are few places on the Internet I see Google get more consistently browbeaten and held to account for its mistakes and abuses than on HN. This has been the case for at least the past six or eight years or more. Threads on Google here are very rarely laudatory; they typically make the front page because of bad things.

HN comments tilt toward overwhelmingly disliking Goliath and favoring David. You see this in most Intel v AMD threads from the past decade. You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged with Oracle. Intel having an inferior product now doesn't explain the visceral response, it's something deeper psychologically, it's a revulsion of big tech broadly. It's mostly just a matter of rooting for the underdog and against big tech. The same thing is common re Amazon and Facebook here (increasingly Apple as well, which has lost a lot of its favor on HN). Microsoft is slightly in favor by contrast, they took a very long big tech lashing previously and people like a comeback story (their open source olive branches help a lot).

Pretty typical, forever repeating psychology. Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until after you fall.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#66

Post by Hello71 » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #53

gdulli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just created a Google Voice account for the first time. A few hours later I asked 3 different friends to send me a text message to see if it worked. I didn't get any of them or any warning that it takes time for the number to activate. I tried again the next day, same results. That was 4-5 days ago, and still nothing. I'm abandoning Google Voice because I assume Google has abandoned it. It's not like there's anyone…

Gaslighting is the worst. It's getting more common, too. Just the other day I found out that posting links in a youtube comment makes the comment invisible to everyone else. In hindsight, disallowing links is almost certainly a good policy and it's easy to understand and appreciate why it was put in place, but why the gaslighting? Just pop up a box explaining that links aren't allowed. The gaslighting isn't going to…

gaslighting doesn't mean hiding.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#67

Post by Nightshaxx » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

leonardteo wrote: post #16

I feel you... We had similar issues with the Google Play store for the ArtStation App ( https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation-... ), it simply got taken down and appealing continually got rejected. It was only after the issue got picked up as the top story on Hacker News and other sites that exposed the dysfunctional nature of their moderation that finally Google subtly changed their policy so t…

That's kinda NSFW.....might be helpful next time if you indicated it as such.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#68

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

begemotz wrote: post #62

vosper wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers. Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of support?

are you suggesting that if you paid, then they would not trade in your data?

I'd go further and suggest that some of those services don't trade in your data even at the free tier.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#69

Post by Guzba » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #51

Next time on HN: Postmortem and lesson learned: Don't make yourself dependent on BIG_COMPANY when building a product

This comment is trite. No Android app, no iPhone app, no Google search listing, no Amazon product page, no Stream/Epic store listing, no browser extensions, no cloud servers. Can you rely on an internet provider or should you lay your own fiber? What technology product are you going to make that relies on nothing? HN deserves better comments imo.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#70

Post by Guzba » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #25

Keeps me wondering, can we still install extensions outside their store? Or did they plug the last escape hatch and fucked it all up?

Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.