Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#71

Post by mintplant » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

fwn wrote: post #63

skinnymuch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a few examples of how Mozilla/Firefox have changed? We all know about FF Quantum. Yeah it sucks what happened. Maybe there was an alternative, but any one saying Firefox should’ve just stuck to not being compatible with Chromium extensions is kidding themselves on how badly that would’ve continued hurting Firefox’s market share. The XUL powered extension I’m sure were powerful so the outcry in certain pl…

I'm not the previous commenter, but on Android Mozilla is removing the ability to install extensions from third parties (think GitHub, etc.) and will trim the only left official extension store down to a few extensions. (I think it's below 20 right now.) An ecosystem where all extensions need to be channelled through one central power broker is pretty much the main requirement to allow them to do what Google is doing…

This is temporary while the Android team builds out and stabilizes the add-on APIs supported in the new Firefox for Android. Otherwise it'd be a total crapshoot whether an add-on you tried to install worked or broke randomly (potentially in gnarly ways).

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#72

Post by laumars » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

the_jeremy wrote: post #51

syshum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Firefox is better than Chrome... Mozilla is becoming more and more Google Like as time progresses, where a few years ago I would have believed it would be unthinkable for Mozilla do so something like this to an extension, today I am not so sure I would trust them either

Who do you trust? Certainly not Chromium-Edge. That leaves "only browse the internet on a Mac with Safari" or browsers with such tiny market share that they'll never be tested against, and sites will routinely be broken for you. My company doesn't do any non-Chrome compatibility testing, so all our intranet sites require Chrome.

Plus any smaller browser likely just another Chromium or Blink fork. There is very little out there these days that is truly independent.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#73

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #40

Baeocystin wrote: post #11

Another long-term PushBullet customer here. Anyone at Google who is listening- this kind of behavior kills my desire to continue using your products dead. I need functionality, of the type PushBullet has provided for years, to do my work. The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things. Behavior like this is simply unacceptable. If you want people to use your services, you need to have s…

> The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things. What did they do to ublock origin? The single best Chrome extension ever . If it stops working and I must suffer YouTube ads again, it's bye bye Chrome.

[deleted]

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#74

Post by devit » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

The fact that they were requesting https://*/* and http://*/* (i.e. full control over all your accounts) without it being absolutely necessary reflects terribly on them.

Still not clear why localhost (which can mean root access to the local machine since it may have localhost-only services that enable that) and cookies access is needed, also http://*.pushbullet.com is unnecessary since they should always use HTTPS.

If they had properly implemented the extension they may not have this problem now.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#75

Post by MattGaiser » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

29083011397778 wrote: post #43

MattGaiser wrote: post #26

Any reason that Google doesn't give reasons and ways to comply? I haven't ever had to deal with a Google person regarding Android development, but when I built stuff for Blackberry (miss that company), they always provided nice and detailed feedback. Blackberry famously let legal influence design, so I would be surprised if it was a cover your ass thing.

> Blackberry famously let legal influence design, Do you have a source or link for this at all for further reading? A quick search doesn't turn up anything, but it sounds like a great read

Famously might be too broad and a bias from my own experience. I went to school in Ontario and knew a bunch of Blackberry interns and employees and people generally know a lot of absurd stories about RIM.

An intern who I went to school with told me about how legal once chose the colors for a dashboard he worked on as they did not want to seem to be copying some other company.

A co-op complained about them being in every meeting and constantly shooting stuff down.

The one written reference to it I know about was in a 2011 open letter.

https://bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-...

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#76

Post by aendruk » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

We had a similar interaction with the Chrome Web Store out of the blue. After a few maddening rounds of requests for clarification and nonsensical canned responses, I finally just gave up and accused them of gaslighting me. Our extension was restored the next day, of course with no explanation for the ordeal.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#77

Post by duxup » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #53

As much as we can criticise Google's handling of this situation, the fact that the developer was able to reduce permissions from accessing data on _all websites_ down to _their website_, as well as tighten up a few other permissions, shows that Google is correct that the extension is asking for more than it needs. I hope the developer finds another load of permissions they can tighten up, resubmits, and is approved.…

Permissions seem to be a pretty empty metric if you don't' know what the result is...

What was the impact of fewer permissions?

Let's assume PushBullet was doing something bad with some of those permissions and gathering data? Do they no longer have access to that data? I'm not sure that's the case, permissions alone don't determine that.

If PushBullet wasn't doing anything bad, did anything change?

Is it a positive thing for users when the extension disappears in a few days?

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#78

Post by majewsky » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #45

Crazyontap wrote: post #28

This is a good extension but here is a cool hack I've discovered that let's you do this anywhere without any chrome extensions: - Create a new whatsgroupp called 'ping self' and add your friend to it. - Then kick your friend out from this group - Open web.whatsapp.com and now you can access your messages, files, photos across any device anywhere, anytime! (telegram also does this and allows file up to 1gb)

For the more limited use case of “get a link from a desktop to my phone right now” I have really enjoyed using an extension on the desktop browser that pops up a QR code linking to the current tab. Then I just point my phone camera at the QR code on the monitor to open the link on my phone. I like this setup because it doesn’t require any pre-configuration to link the desktop and the phone. Your friend sitting next t…

I use

  wl-paste | qrencode -s 20 -o - | display -

for this purpose. Shows the contents of the current Wayland clipboard as a QR code. For X11, replace `wl-paste` with `xsel -b`.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#79

Post by throwawayext » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

Different extension developer here. The Chrome Extension store ecosystem has become a nightmare for developers over the past year. Some items:

- Extension review times have gone from 1 hour to a variable amount of time ranging from 1 minute to 3 weeks or longer (try to plan a release or spot fix an issue when you have no idea how long it will take for a deploy to reach users)

- User reviews of extensions have been disabled (how are you supposed to build an audience or build up trust without reviews?)

- Manifest v3 was announced (this was actually longer than a year ago) which will completely break many types of extensions. Over a year later, it is still on the horizon but the beta releases of it are buggy so it is hard to even try to adapt to it at this point.

- Persistent extension related bugs in Chrome are not being fixed and new regressions are being introduced breaking previously working extensions (which you then need to rush out a fix for but good luck with that when the reviewers may take weeks to approve the update)

- Chrome is exploring hiding extensions by default so they no longer will show up automatically by the omnibar when you install them (say hello to a huge amount of confused users who don't know where your extension went)

I understand the Chrome team is trying to address a user trust and fraud issue with extensions and we are grateful for that. However, the Google extension team appears to be massively understaffed and are having huge issues managing and evolving the ecosystem.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#80

Post by AaronFriel » Wed, May 13, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #40

Baeocystin wrote: post #11

Another long-term PushBullet customer here. Anyone at Google who is listening- this kind of behavior kills my desire to continue using your products dead. I need functionality, of the type PushBullet has provided for years, to do my work. The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things. Behavior like this is simply unacceptable. If you want people to use your services, you need to have s…

> The recent nerfing of ublock origin has already had me feeling iffy on things. What did they do to ublock origin? The single best Chrome extension ever . If it stops working and I must suffer YouTube ads again, it's bye bye Chrome.

Context and receipts are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170485