by imran3740 on 5/15/20, 4:18 PM with 197 comments
by raybb on 5/15/20, 4:25 PM
by _fat_santa on 5/15/20, 5:15 PM
As an extension developer its absolutely infuriating to realize that:
1. There is no way to install extensions outside the web store
2. Google won't approve anything to the web store.
3. The vast majority of people use Chrome vs other browsers.
------
I get it, Chrome is Google's browser and they can do what they please with it. However Chromium is open source and it's still impossible to do so.
Like thanks Google. I spent months developing an extension only to realize that as it stands today for the majority of developers, the chrome web store is closed for new submissions.
And Google didn't even have the courtesy of telling us it's essentially closed, they just string us along with "pending reviews" (for context I've been trying to get my extension approved since February).
by lqet on 5/16/20, 12:02 AM
> FWIW Tweeting at other Googlers will probably just get them to me – not that I have a problem with that. At the moment there isn't really a better way, and as a single human I don't scale well. TBH we have systemic issues to work through to improve the comms process here
https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261058935085101058
> I'm literally the only one for extensions.
by juped on 5/15/20, 8:59 PM
by DrJaws on 5/15/20, 4:24 PM
Also, I laugh about the google promise of being more open. Every single time they screw it and goes viral, they promise the same until 6 months later when another business is screwed again.
Call it having your mail shut down, your cloud, app deleted on the play store, the extension on chrome, etc etc.
We've already heard that story dozens of times.
by seanwilson on 5/15/20, 7:39 PM
It's currently expected behaviour that extension updates from developers can take up to 3 weeks to be reviewed and go live (same as before the pandemic):
https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/faq
> "If your item's status says "pending review" for more than three weeks, you should contact support."
Is it going to change? When? See here for all the developers waiting over 3 weeks for their updates to go live (that's not including what happens when they don't pass review):
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...
All we seem to get back from the few people on the Chrome extension team that communicate with extension developers is along the lines of "I understand your concerns, I want it to change as well, and I'll talk to the team".
It's like the person from Google is talking about getting in touch with a team that work for entirely different company, as if what the team can't be influenced.
Who's the one making the actual decisions and why don't they talk to us directly?
by jakozaur on 5/15/20, 6:33 PM
I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals.
It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.
by graham_paul on 5/15/20, 6:33 PM
As a technical person, you should be advocating the use of (real, community owned) open source browsers not just whatever the majority uses.
I feel that Google's monopoly on the browser market for desktops will be more and more endangered as they (for legitimate business reasons) refuse to provide the services and processes that a modern browser user/developer deserves.
by jboydyhacker on 5/15/20, 6:26 PM
It's not as if developers can go to other platforms since Chrome has 70% of the market. Most of us in tech are in it to innovate and disrupt but hard to do that if everything is a Google or Amazon monopoly.
If Chrome is broken then the browser market is broken. Devs should organize to solve this since Google doesn't seem to be paying attention.
We need to collect and organize feedback from those experiencing problems which is everyone. Get it to antitrust folks in the EU and DOJ to start an investigation (to add to their other investigations). If Google knows the EU and Feds are watching, they might start behaving.
by benatkin on 5/15/20, 5:02 PM
As a user I want my browser's extension support to be more like Visual Studio Code's than like Atom's. Visual Studio Code has fine grained permissions, and prevents extensions from going through and changing everything. Still, it's nice that Atom exists so if I want more powerful extensions, I can use Atom.
There's two ways to go that I see. One is for someone to release an alternative browser that let you install pretty much any extension, sort of like Atom. The other is for the company that wants to provide the user with an innovative browsing experience to develop their own browser, which is what Brave has done.
My reaction to Pushbullet is, as the author of the top comment on a recent post put it, "Yikes" [0]. They have funding from reputable VCs but they require way too much permission and store way too much user data for what seems to be occasionally useful utilities, and this places them alongside the Ask Toolbar in my mental model of the space.
by fouric on 5/15/20, 7:33 PM
by dilandau on 5/15/20, 9:50 PM
Nobody wants their life and livelihood to be fucked over by an algorithm, especially when there is no recourse. These stories almost always end with some random person at Google "fixing something, really sorry" with no explanation. This is how Google operates, and I think they actually try to cultivate this image of themselves. It adds to their mystique and helps them hire bright engineers.
What can I do? Same as last time this came up, the best thing you can do is just to not use Google properties or software, and turn on your adblocker.
by RHSeeger on 5/15/20, 4:50 PM
I think it's been made abundantly clear that Google will not, in fact, improve anything from experiences like this. They happen over and over and every single time it's the same; if it gets publicity, someone helps resolve it; but nothing ever improves in the way of communication.
by ulises314 on 5/15/20, 10:22 PM
-The permissions that pushbullet needed originally where a bit overaching.
-We never knew which was the offending one.
-Reading the original article it crossed my mind that some of the permissions the extension asked could be used for marketing (I'm not implying that they were used for that), and maybe google just didn't wanted extension developers to have a cut on that.
-I really don't like how this marketplaces have made big companies gatekeepers for market share.
by ocdtrekkie on 5/15/20, 5:34 PM
I asked them to show me where they still found it... and they then realized it was indeed gone, rejecting my re-review was incorrect, and reenabled the account.
The only positive on my end, was that since it was the Ads team, where Google's money is, I got human email responses.
by spaceribs on 5/15/20, 7:55 PM
It started out with "Add google meet" not being a button, and below the Zoom button. Last week it shifted to the Google Meet button being a larger blue button. Today, they moved the Meet button to before the Zoom button by shifting their DOM around.
I assume Zoom can't do anything about this for 3 weeks at least, definitely goes to show how much authority Google has in this situation.
by rosywoozlechan on 5/15/20, 4:59 PM
They're not going to be able to spend millions of dollars to fund better human moderators and tools for the extension reviews when a typical extension brings what, a few cents for Google?
They probably can't justify the resources to do the sort of specific feedback that would make this process much better.
by afandian on 5/15/20, 5:16 PM
> things are back to normal now
I bet this happens again.
by aasasd on 5/15/20, 9:46 PM
Since Big G's treatment of extension developers is incompatible with their self-respect, I wholeheartedly support devs who decide to dump the web store—despite me making some use of two Chrome-based browsers.
by HackOfAllTrades on 5/15/20, 4:58 PM
by Someone1234 on 5/15/20, 4:47 PM
I understand that the Chrome extension store is free, but if you're going to point a bunch of bots at it and have them de-list extensions based on unknown metrics, the least you could do is communicate the "gotcha" rules the extension supposedly violated.
by aspenmayer on 5/15/20, 5:01 PM
by BiteCode_dev on 5/16/20, 7:01 AM
Wait, what?
So you have an completly black box ultimatum, and even if you somehow magically guess what needs to be done, if you do it, they can still reject you?
That's worse than debugging IE6.
That's dishonest.
by 7ewis on 5/15/20, 7:07 PM
Read it could take a month plus be delayed due to COVID-19. I was pleasantly surprised.
by schoolornot on 5/15/20, 4:58 PM
by coronadisaster on 5/15/20, 6:32 PM
by escape_goat on 5/15/20, 6:20 PM
I don't actually know the story of Google Reader and RSS feeds, but I remember how integral RSS feeds were to the golden era of blogging, and how abruptly that era seems to have ended with Google Reader's apparent death. And to me, that has a similar feeling. The idea is that the target is not potential competition wherever it might spring up; the idea is to sap the demand that might nourish competition, to suck the air out of the room, and stifle the imagination of the market itself.
It isn't Google alone who is responsible for this feeling, to be fair. There is watching the growth of the walled garden of Facebook, watching the collapse of the old chat services which allowed independent clients, watching successful startup after successful startup turn new ideas into content for a routine process wherein we see the exact same sheen of gloss on the promises, the same dance steps towards the pirouette, the attempt to pivot gracefully and effortlessly towards monetization in a maneuver that is in fact a mating dance desirous of acquisition.
All of it really sucks. It's not like there's an easy alternative. People like free things, and with computer-based resources there is often so much opportunity to scale the value of a thing that free things can be sustainable; a project can succeed and be useful to thousands of people merely on the basis of the labour that some are willing to commit to to sustain it. Again, I'm less qualified to describe this than most of you are. But that's what open source is like.
It doesn't work with services. Code that runs of different platforms can be replicated/adopted for infinitesimal cost, and the underlying costs of running it are naturally distributed. Services are different. The replication/adoption and the creation of value both involve on a massive rush of the many to the one. That relationship pretty much sums up the whole story. If capital accrued to capital by a square law, attention would accrue to attention by a cube law. In idiosyncratic niches that cannot be satisfied by the mass service, alternatives are actually viable and flourish. But anything that would be beneficial to us all encounters this problem of needing to absorb the real costs of operation while seeming to be as free as possible, or else the users will flit away to a different flower.
There's no good solution to this, but the way in which Google has graciously assumed responsibility for directing our attention does not make it better. All the improvements to search results over time seem to focus attention more and more to what an archetype of user is likely to be satisfied with. I would not be surprised if the energy costs per search had gone down. As many have noted, esoteric results are increasingly invisible.
Anyways, this is what we have done with the new universe of human communication that has opened up in the last few decades, which we imagined we would leverage into new systems of effortless communication and collaboration. And we have, to a lesser extent. Second best or third best. But we've discovered this really intractable problem with the distribution of costs.
by duxup on 5/15/20, 5:11 PM
by cryptonector on 5/15/20, 10:54 PM
by asdf21 on 5/15/20, 4:59 PM