18 ms·

How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

330 points by andygambles 10y ago

petercooper 10y ago
I'm starting to think that if Google had a service where you could pay $10/$20/whatever, and actually get someone reasonably well informed to read what you're saying and direct your issue to the right person, they'd have another significant revenue stream on their hands ;-)
- majewsky 10y ago
  There is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not collect any data about me without my explicit consent.
  - gvurrdon 10y ago
    I too would very much like those things. But, how would we know that they were telling the truth about not collecting the data?
    - watwatwatwat 10y ago
      It would be illegal.
    - aembleton 10y ago
      You could compare your search results to a fresh browser on a new IP address.
  - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
    Thus far, I accomplish that via: Duck, Duck, Go; NoScript; Privacy Badger; and uBlock Origin. Its silly to need to do all that, but it works well for me.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      uBlock cannot give me a pristine timeline; Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. It's not just about ads, it's about how a tool's design is poisoned by the need for maximal ad revenue. As far as DuckDuckGo goes, I would really love to use them regularly. DDG is even the default search engine on my notebook, but I find myself going to Google in the second step about 90% of the time because DDG's results are too bad. Also, DDG is still running on ads, so it's more of the same, albeit implemented more privacy-consciously.
      - toxican 10y ago
        I love DDG in theory. In practice, I append !g to about half of my searches because the results aren't good enough. Say what you will about the privacy concerns, but Google knowing I frequently search for programming stuff makes finding other programming stuff a much easier process.
        karrotwaltz 10y ago
        I have this !g routine too, but lately I'm having a much harder time finding good, technical programming answers than before, even on Google. I would love being able to easily blacklist some websites such as stackoverflow and the likes which often have unanswered questions or incomplete answers, and often fills the first 2 Google's result pages.
      - raverbashing 10y ago
        > Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. Settings -> Account, under "Content" unmark "Show me the best Tweets first"
        10y ago
  - firasd 10y ago
    I think there's at least two reasons. With Twitter or Facebook the problem is that they're dependent on network effects so asking for payments from users is out of the question, they would never get to 100s of millions of users that way. With Google search, you may have more of a point, but I guess in the end Procter and Gamble has more money to spend on individual search transactions for ads than the other parties involved (users searching for sites and website publishers who want to appear in results.) Apple is probably the most successful counter-example but even they are now going to have app store ads.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      Don't have to charge everybody. There can be a free tier ("pay with your data") and a paid tier ("pay with your wallet")
      - ajanuary 10y ago
        It can be complicated. For example, now you're not advertising to your most engaged users, so advertising on the service becomes less valuable.
    - toxican 10y ago
      Over the years I've seen the reaction to a lot of those "Facebook is going to start charging money!" fake posts and it's very negative. I can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if twitter or Facebook offered a "pro" experience. People don't respond well to free things becoming paid, even if the free version remains largely the same.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    You can pay less then 10€ a month to get ad free YouTube and Music. Best money I spend every month.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      Great. Now they should offer the same for the search engine.
      - robin_reala 10y ago
        I think you can? https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com . Not that I’ve tried it - I’m not allowed to in the UK.
        Globz 10y ago
        I get this error when I try to sign-up : Error fetching data. Please try again later.
        Veen 10y ago
        Contributor is only for sites that use Google's ad products. I don't think it works in Search. Essentially, it's a way for a site's users to bid for its ad spots. If you bid more than the advertisers, you don't have to see the ads. It's quite a clever idea really, but I don't think it has much uptake from publishers.
        bduerst 10y ago
        I use it and it probably covers about 65-75% of ads I see, and almost 100% on news websites. I've also seen it work in apps. It's too bad there wasn't some way to have it cross over networks too.
      - baldfat 10y ago
        They have adds on Google Search? I swear my mind automatically just remove them subconsciously. Also you could just use an add block
  - chiefalchemist 10y ago
    Support costs money. Big money. Just as FB, IG, TW, etc. For the most part, they all suck.
  - red_admiral 10y ago
    My guess here is that the subset of users who would be willing to pay a monthly subscription is strongly correlated with the subset that advertisers are interested in targeting most. If a site got say 10% of users to pay a subscription, their value to advertisers - and hence their advertising revenue - might drop a lot more than 10%, leaving them with a net loss.
    - watwatwatwat 10y ago
      I run uBlock origin and would pay for a monthly subscription.
    - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
      That's a very interesting point. I never thought of that and I think you're right.
    - GrinningFool 10y ago
      It seems to me the opposite. If someone cares enough to pay for the content directly ,I suspect that person is the one who will be going out of the way to avoid ads and tracking in the first place.
      - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
        The trouble is that at this stage hoovering up customer data is in Google's DNA. As far as my perceptions go all a paid option means is that now they attach my credit card details to their data on me.
    - lliiffee 10y ago
      That's a good point, but it also seems strongly correlated with those that run ad/privacy blockers. (Even with such a blocker, perhaps the data collected is still valuable, though?) My instinct is that by selling an ad and tracking-free site, they would be indicating that the ads and tracking are a bad thing, as opposed to the party line that it's all "to deliver better services to you".
  - spot 10y ago
    google does not sell your data. this is such a tired canard.
    - mhurron 10y ago
      Selling access to the user that created the data is the same damn thing for the end user. It's just that in the way Google does it, Google gets paid over and over instead of one time selling a static list.
      - spot 10y ago
        not it isn't. if you sell the data then it goes into 3rd party hands and out of google's control and they can do all kinds of bad things with it.
        majewsky 10y ago
        And what exactly prevents them from doing the bad things themselves? What is the inherent reason that I should trust Google more than any other business?
        spot 10y ago
        they have a track record.
        karmachameleon2 10y ago
        A track record of doing bad things behind the scenes, perhaps?
        mhurron 10y ago
        'Bad things' are tracking (Google does this), targeted ads (Google does this), selling access to information so others can target ads and drop tracking (Google does this), allowing Governments access to your activities (Google does this) Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here? The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    The problem is that Google does not want that messaging. If they collected money in exchange for not violating your privacy, they'd be acknowledging that what they do, is actually violating your privacy. At times, Google has even tried to use the rhetoric that providing you more relevant ads is a service to you that improves your experience on the Internet. (LOL) Basically, the income they'd gain from offering this would pale in comparison of the reputation they'd lose (and following that, users) from admitting what they do is bad for you.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    The problem is that by paying you are also identifying yourself and what user data would be better than clearly identified user data? Second problem is that there is potentially more money in you than this proposed relatively low amount because you are probably spending a lot more in a month and it is big attraction to become a middleman in every transaction you make.
  - jeffmould 10y ago
    A little off-topic, but I was just talking about that Twitter idea the other day with someone. He had asked if I thought Twitter would go private or sell off. I said that Twitter should look at ways to monetize their stream outside of ads. Like you, I would gladly pay a couple bucks a month to customize my feed how I want it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- fractal618 10y ago
  Assuming one person could serve 50 customers in this manner. And they were to earn 50k/year. The monthly fee for this service would be about $80.
  - newscracker 10y ago
    Your assumption that one person can serve 50 customers a month seems to be quite low. That comes to spending about four hours per customer to respond, track and provide a resolution or workaround! Of course, the duration would vary depending on what kind of support channel is used (phone vs. chat vs. email). You also seem to be assuming that all paying customers would have major issues that can only be resolved by working with other teams, getting a new resolution or change implemented, etc. In reality, most customer cases can be resolved quickly by searching for documentation and pointing them to it and/or explaining things better (and improving the support documentation along side when necessary). I would assume that at least 30 customers can be served per eight hour working day. That's spending more than 15 minutes per customer and is usually adequate (on average) even for phone support! With my extrapolation here, which is again just an example (real scenarios would be different), the basic cost incurred by the service provider for the salary alone comes to about $7 per user per month. Add for overheads and it would still be fine to charge $10 or $12 per month. If service tiers are used, then there could be multiple slabs, mechanisms for support and turnaround times - all these would bring down the actual cost further.
- bussiere 10y ago
  we can also imagine that the people who get the message get a part of the money. And the more you pay the more your message is higlighted or promote to these people.
- dboreham 10y ago
  It would cost much more than $10/$20 to provide that service, so you'd be in "whatever" territory.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Then charge $500. Whatever it needs to cost, charge it.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  I would gladly pay for developer support. I do it for Apple. (I'm the original author).
chinhodado 10y ago
These stories are too common. Google is mortified of trademark/IP violation, so if you made the mistake of naming your thing wrong and got reported, good luck getting help with it. On the Android app store it's even worse, once taken down if you want to submit the app again under a different name you have to make a new app package, which means forfeiting all the existing users, reviews, ratings, etc.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
Email the Bing team and ask them to feature a "Unresolved Google Complaint of the Day" with a timer ticking to show how long the problem has been left unresolved with a link to your blog post - on the Bing home page. That might get you somewhere :-)
chris_wot 10y ago
Meh, this will be he death of Google. Check out their "Collaborative Inbox". It's a disaster and totally unusable. I work for a company that tried to use it, but the feedback was so bad despite management buy-in it is totally unused, and will never be used by any user.
baldfat 10y ago
If you write a extension to remove ads from FaceBook and your user base has grown from 4,000 to 24,000 users and it just got taken down I feel your lucky. I am not saying it is good, bad or indifferent but someone is going to notice you and make some noise when you remove ads from FaceBook and you have FaceBook in your name. The communication side fo things is clearly bad on Google's side. Similar to the YouTube demonetized videos fiasco. Google needs more PR and Communication people.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
nmstoker 10y ago
It seems recently like anything inbound to Google goes into /dev/null! A number of us have been trying to get a response regarding Google Apps accounts with Play Music, and we're paying customers. There's no response to the forum https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/play/86WVa8b_3i4/9kDu_0CaAwAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&u... nor when I put it on Twitter and when a load of us tried direct feedback via the app, that still hasn't got any response. Clearly their model needs to rely on limited user support and that's okay, provided there's a good service with some human presence. But it's getting to be a problem...
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  You'd think if they could blow billions of dollars on tons of industries they have no intention of actually entering, they could find a few million somewhere to hire some CSRs. Google's gotten big enough now where they aren't incentivized to give a shit.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
    "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company." -– Saturday Night Live, September 18, 1976. Hey, fifty years. (So, are we getting Baby Googles and Facebooks in another ten years, or are those times behind us?)
    - aminorex 10y ago
      More likely the multinationals will breakup the governments this time around.
- adzicg 10y ago
  anecdotally, you can get good support if you're a customer, but there's a big difference between a customer and a user. I've heard (not confirmed personally, just overheard at conferences), that if you spend enough on adwords to register on their radar as a customer, things are easy to get sorted even if they're nowhere adwords related. the big difference is that for the most part, google users/developers/... are not really customers.
chiefalchemist 10y ago
What's that? Google? Poor support? Poor service? Say it isn't so. To be clear, #Sarcasm :) Google's genius, isn't so much what they do. It's also that they've lowered the bar when it comes to expectations. They understand that designing and building products is relatively easy. The unknowns are in time knowable. On the other hand , reality-based humans drive Google crazy. They are, evidently, to be avoided at all costs. In that context, it's "interesting" how it's working out for Google+, eh. Surprised?
- wernercd 10y ago
  In some aspects, maybe... in other aspects, they've raised the bar to heights that others can't/won't reach. In a company that has hundreds of products, is that really so hard to believe? Mega successes... mega failures. Still massively successful? Look at Apple. They were at the top with the iPod. Then the iPhone. Then the iPad. Massively successful. Yet they still release turd products like one button mouse, Apple TV and the G4 Cube. Or Microsoft with their massively successful products and massively unsuccessful turds. It's not like other companies don't have horrible customer support... Nope... just Google. /rolls eyes
  - jamespo 10y ago
    Google's customer support isn't horrible, it's just not there
  - mattkevan 10y ago
    The difference is that Apple's support in general (everyone drops the ball occasionally) is very good. Millions of people out there with iPhones, but they can always get support for them if they need it.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    > one button mouse Although I have some serious issues with Apple (e.g. iPhone 6 plus), Apple hasn't released a one button mouse in a long time. They all have two buttons, just check the preferences. Frankly, Apple TV is actually a pretty good product since my technophobe Mom can use it for its intended purpose. I still don't like the whole remote policy, but that's a developer thing and frankly Apple really isn't the most friendly company to developers either.
hota_mazi 10y ago
> I received an email from Google telling me that my extension violated Facebook’s trademark What did you expect? Any service, not just Google, will shut down apps and extensions for similar reasons. This has nothing to do with > I just don’t think it is worth it to put any amount of effort to build something on a platform that turned out to be so unreliable.
- dordoka 10y ago
  I do agree that any service might honor the takedown request for the registered trademark infringement. But what the author refers to is completely another issue: the complete lack of support from Google. The extension author complied with the request. Tried to contact several times an only got canned responses. I guess Google doesn't care much about people that develop for their platform. At least that's what I got from the blog post. Therefore, author's conclusion about developing for that platform seens right.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    Additionally, how the hell is this trademark infringement? We've been using the "Software Name for X" formula for decades to refer to programs that operate in conjunction with other systems. In this case this extension only works with Facebook, therefore the Facebook name is more or less required to describe the function of the product with any accuracy. It's not like he's written a third party app for Facebook or we made his own social network called Facebook, he's done nothing to damage the value of the trademark. I'm generally a pro IP guy but this seems extremely draconian.
    - dordoka 10y ago
      I was just reproducing the term trademark infringement from the article. I also do agree that FB here is somehow taking advantage of said laws to send to /dev/null the extension that renders one of their revenue streams ineffective. I'm no expert in US trademark laws by any means, maybe they're entitled to leverage it for these kind of cases.
  - 10y ago
Buetol 10y ago
That's what you get when you centralize things. A better thing could be a community-owned store for the chrome extensions (and a community-owner browser). Something like the Mozilla Add-ons site but for Chromium-only extensions. Or being able to add you own stores in Chromium, would be even nice for companies who want to distribute private extensions.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  The problem is actually that Chrome is a thing at all. Even greater problem is a lot of developers, who should know better, recommending it en masse to laypersons.
Mahn 10y ago
> I just want you to think twice before creating a revenue stream based on the Chrome Web Store. This is probably not a good idea in general today anyway, with Google phasing it out for Windows/Linux/macOS.
- dgacmu 10y ago
  Chrome Apps are being phased out for Win/Lin/Mac, but I don't think there's a change to extensions or the store itself?
edent 10y ago
Not providing any meaningful support is Google's business model - you can see them talk about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I > Google estimates that they would need to hire over 20,000 customer service people to deal with 1 query every three years from each customer. So it has decided - as far as possible - to employ zero people and rely on algorithms. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-conundrum/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-c...
- adamc 10y ago
  Which is a really good argument for never developing for the Google eco-system. Because you can't afford to invest in a platform where if something goes wrong you're just f*cked.
  - pyvpx 10y ago
    to be fair, for some parts of the eco-system, and for some values of investment, you can pay for support.
  - malka 10y ago
    Agreed. At least on other corporate eco systems (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), if you are a paying customer, you have great support.
    - colemannerd 10y ago
      Absolutely! You only have to use 10 year old technology for that support.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Great! It's had time for a lot of the bugs to get knocked out, and most of the rest to be well enough known for fixes to be pretty solidly understood.
  - Touche 10y ago
deanclatworthy 10y ago
What you are doing not only violated Facebook's trademark (good luck calling it fair use), but it's also against Facebook's ToS. They have actively gone after extension authors who alter the Facebook experience and even deactivated their accounts. Rightly or wrongly, when you sign up to a service you are bound by the conditions they set out. In this case, making an extension to block advertising is probably not going to end well for you.
- piyush_soni 10y ago
  But then, aren't Adblock Plus/uBlock Origin violating the ToS by altering the 'Facebook experience' as well? They're still there on the Web store.
  - bjz_ 10y ago
    They don't have 'Facebook' in the name. Probably much easier for them to go after trademark infringement.
    - piyush_soni 10y ago
      Yes, that's what I meant by my comment that hiding ads is probably ok for them, it's only the name that they're concerned about.
- Algent 10y ago
  I can see the obvious trademark issue since he used the facebook name. But I don't get why you bring up the ToS. Those are irrelevant outside of FB's website. ToS =/= Law.
  - pas 10y ago
    Facebook could close the accounts of people who use AdBlockers.
    - Sylos 10y ago
piyush_soni 10y ago
The exact same thing happened to me. I have a fairly successful Firefox add-on named 'Yahoo Mail Hide Ad Panel'[0], and it is one of the top-rated extensions on Mozilla's Add-on store. When I wrote it for Chrome, they removed it apparently after a complaint from Yahoo. Understandable, but I asked them how are the other extensions containing the same name not removed? No answer. I asked if "Hide Ad Panel for Yahoo Mail" would work, no response. I just gave up and decided not to write that extension for Chrome, just like OP did. [0] : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yahoomailhideadpanel/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yahoomailhide...
- tobltobs 10y ago
  I guess it is not using "Facebook" or in your case "Yahoo" in your extension name, but changing the content for a user of a Facebook or Yahoo page is what is triggering the remove of the extension. If it is against the TOS (or Platform Policy) I don't see how else they are supposed to react if the get a complain.
  - piyush_soni 10y ago
    It's not the removal of add-on that pissed me off, but the lack of proper response on what would be the acceptable resolution. Not using the name would change the meaning as both of these are not general purpose ad blockers. Had they replied saying "for <their name>" is ok, I wouldn't have removed it. At least they could have replied with a flat 'No' to make things clear.
    - Merovius 10y ago
      I quote: > We cannot prevent from being "Flagged" and unable to reveal the reason of flagging. What do you expect from them? They openly said they can not divulge more information about this. There is no "response on what would be the acceptable resolution" that is more proper, unless you assume they are straight out lying.
  - barkbro 10y ago
    I don't see how an add-on posted on the Chrome store is subject to Facebook's ToS. It might be aiding people in breaking the ToS, but is there really a law against that?
uptown 10y ago
"I got quite a few offers to sell it, so others could push advertising trough it." Makes you wonder how many of my installed extensions have changed owners during my use.
alimbada 10y ago
This is the first I've heard of this extension. I'd be interested in sideloading it using Chrome's Developer mode if the developer made it available for download separate of the Chrome Web Store.
revelation 10y ago
You use "Facebook" in the name of your extension to lure users into installing it. Google tells you you can't use the trademark. You again use the trademark. Google gives up on your spammy ways. They seem to have done everything right here.
- njloof 10y ago
  Register it as "for FB" -- users will know what it stands for.
  - nkozyra 10y ago
    If you read the original email, the complaint also lists "FB."
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  4 years later... it's a cleaner that works only of Facebook. It's not a lure or anything. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. (I'm the author of the post).
- Sylos 10y ago
  Apple approved "Cleaner - for Facebook" when the author had gotten a complaint there. No reason to believe that Google wouldn't approve of it. The two companies are after all still under the same laws. Also, are you seriously telling me that making a different suggestion once, which still contains the trademark is spammy? Any reasonable customer service would have just responded that this still isn't alright either, maybe even suggested a few names, which would not infringe the trademark.
andreapaiola 10y ago
Over 1 month and counting to update a Google Web Font (Mada) https://github.com/khaledhosny/mada/issues/11#issuecomment-244472491 https://github.com/khaledhosny/mada/issues/11#issuecomment-2...
- pavlov 10y ago
  Sorry to say, but don't get your hopes up... It seems like Google doesn't care about ever updating the fonts they distribute. The author of Crimson Text, a very popular free web font, complains about it on his Github readme [1]: "While you are looking at the new, improved version, Google Fonts continues to offer the clumsy-looking original and has not heeded the repeated pleas for an upgrade." [1] https://github.com/skosch/Crimson https://github.com/skosch/Crimson
  - andreapaiola 10y ago
    Well... I've downloaded a newer version and now it's local... actually I have no hopes and don't care anymore... ;)
Jerry2 10y ago
>My requests got closed with a “Thanks for your feedback.” canned response. This is a prime example of why I don't use my Gmail anymore and why I pay for email. I've read plenty of horror stories of how people lost their Gmail accounts for all kinds of reasons. Most of the losses were completely unrelated to Gmail but related to perceived 'abuse' of Google's other services like Youtube (if your YT account gets shut down for 'copyright abuse', your Gmail will be gone as well). Some people lost Gmail accounts over Google Play store apps they submitted. Basically, if they close your account, your Gmail is linked to it and it's gone too. That scared the heck out of me because I had my whole life in there. And there's just no way to contact Google's support... unless you know someone at Google. Author should feel lucky they didn't close his account over this.
- Betabot101 10y ago
  I've recently started to move a lot of the services I use away from Google provided services. Who'd you go with instead of Gmail for email?
  - KiwiCoder 10y ago
    Not OP, but I moved all of my email from free Gmail to paid Fastmail about 2 years ago, and I've not had a moment of regret. I send quite a lot of email for work and other things and I have what I think is a higher-than-average number of email addresses to manage. One adjustment I made - I now archive older emails to avoid extra storage costs, which in turn means that searching for older emails is slightly more hassle. Fastmail's web interface and mobile app are not quite as slick (as gmail) but this isn't a big deal for me personally.
    - Sylos 10y ago
      Can't you just use another e-mail app, like for example K-9 Mail, with it?
      - KiwiCoder 10y ago
        I used K-9 for many months and it was just OK. The FastMail app was not a huge improvement (over K-9) but it was still an improvement, at least in my experience. From memory K-9 didn't handle multiple "send-from" accounts as competently as the FastMail app, and there were other quirks that became more irritating over time.
tdash 10y ago
Slightly off topic. But here's another story of how unresponsive software giants are and how how helpless the users are in most cases http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://the-ken.com/the-unbelievable-story-of-a-facebook-impostor/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
gizmodo59 10y ago
Google is highly unreliable for developers. The number of products that are discontinued are staggering. Not trying to be pessimistic but unfortunately many feels like that.
intralizee 10y ago
I've had good support with real Google support "people" when using Google's Cloud Service. It may just be that the extension falls under the category of ad blocking and they choose to ignore for beneficial reasons over actually replying. It would be curious to see the same thing happening towards a popular extension that doesn't deal with ads.
nabla9 10y ago
The economic model for writing apps for closed distribution platforms, or -stores is kind of serfdom without manorial courts. You sign of your rights for being heard or listened. You are in the mercy of the platform owner. From the point of platform owner this kind of indifference and arbitrariness is justified with low cost and it's not going to go away. They only need to keep the frequency of occurrences within acceptable limits.
kowdermeister 10y ago
This story has some parody feeling to it :) Just to recap: 1) Receives a take down notice for trademark violation 2) Changes name from "Cleaner Facebook" TO "Cleaner — for Facebook" :) 3) Gets surprised as taken down again Let me suggest a few names _without_ Facebook in the title: - Social facelift - Clean UI - Fresh look for social media
- al_chemist 10y ago
  Except "for X" way is suggested by Google in their "copyright infrigement" email.
  - zenopopovici 10y ago
    I think you confused the mails ... it's not.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  You got it wrong. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in this way was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google.
  - atombath 10y ago
    Devil's advocate: it isn't in Google's interest to give you legal advice.
  - kowdermeister 10y ago
    > If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it Most of programming btw is like that. Google throw an exception with a better error than "undefined is not an object". Maybe it's easy for me from the outside to pinpoint the problem, but it's usually about reading between the lines. Their support is indeed poor, but you are not entitled anything and probably the lesson here is not to build anything serious on 3rd party platforms where you are unsure about licensing, legal questions. I've been burned once by SoundCloud legal team for using their public API.
nkozyra 10y ago
> After 3 months of trying everything I could think of, I give up. Frankly, it would have taken just one thing - remove references to Facebook. I know that's basically amounting to doing some linguistic gymnastics in order to express what your extension does, but you _did_ in fact use a trademark without their consent, and ostensibly in a way that reduces their revenue stream. This really isn't a Graffino v Google issue. Expecting "due process" is also an unrealistic complaint in this scenario. > I just want you to think twice before creating a revenue stream based on the Chrome Web Store. Forget the Chrome Web Store. Think twice before creating a revenue stream based on any service that can pull out the rug at any moment. If you don't control your own destiny things like this can and will happen.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. It's also a cleaner that works only of Facebook. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in "Cleaner - For Facebook" was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google. Thing is that they basically told me I can't do anything if the original complainant gives his go-ahead ... after 3 months of canned responses. I agree with your second point. (I'm the author of the post).
  - nkozyra 10y ago
    > So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. This is not a great defense. We know from the trail you presented that someone from FB's legal/compliance team found your extension, not the others, likely due to its visibility and popularity. That doesn't mean the other extensions are in the clear. It just means they weren't on FB's radar. > The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. I'm sorry, but that's irrelevant. The complaint wasn't that you were profiting from the ™, just that you were using it. > If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google I cannot disagree more. They told you what the problem was and the originating email explained that quite explicitly. You did not have permission to use the trademark Facebook (or FB). That's it. If you removed those protected trademarks, it would have been a different story.
ptero 10y ago
I am not surprised that Google took this down when reported for copyright/IP violation (whether true or made up) and that emails from a relatively small project are only getting canned responses (I wish it were different, but realistically Google is not going to change). I think the only way to change this is to get advocacy online to get noticed. And as someone else said, if you build plugins for a company-managed software, you are at their mercy WRT to disabling it at any time (the same is true for a community-based software as well, but the process is usually transparent and more aligned with users and developers needs -- no blanket "because copyright" rejections).
kelvin0 10y ago
Google went from 'do no evil' to 'do no support'. It feels like talking to a refrigerator when you desperately need support for a service you are paying for. Been there, done that I will never rely on google for anything remotely useful again (apart from www searches).
matthewhall 10y ago
Your extension should have gotten pulled... you are stealing from the developers who put ads on their products. Ad blockers are evil. You as a developer should understand this
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  I know. I'm so evil...:)
savrajsingh 10y ago
Google suspended adwords for my shareware software site and removed it from the index because I didn't post a EULA. I posted it, but now they're claiming I need 'more original content' -- the whole site is original. Not sure how or why innocent developers are being caught up in the dragnet obviously intended for spammers / scammers, but it seems those folks continue to operate freely while the innocent are being locked down.
al_chemist 10y ago
My app "LoL Helper" was also copyright infringing League of Legends. Not sure if I can laugh out loud anymore.
zenopopovici 10y ago
I'm really surprised this got so much traction..., I didn't submit this to HN. Baffled that so many users went trough roughly the same experience. (I'm the original author)
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Great project - is this in a repo we can fork?
  - zenopopovici 10y ago
    It's not opensource. I would have to rewrite it to open source it. And write some docs. I don't know if I have the time for it. I can't release it in the form it is now. I'm really ashamed of the code I wrote a few years back :).
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Don't worry about it! The code probably isn't nearly as bad as you think, and anyway it can be improved through PRs... Did you consider open-sourcing it from the beginning? If so, why did you decide not to do that?
ythl 10y ago
Before I even read the article I knew the extension was an ad-blocker. All these people make ad-destroying apps and extensions and then act flabbergasted when big companies relying on ad-revenue don't like that and file complaints to get them taken down.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  But it's not why it was taken down ... :)
  - ythl 10y ago
    Try an experiment, then. Create a new account and submit the extension under a new name unrelated to facebook. Grow your userbase to a size significant enough that FB notices. I am betting that FB will get it taken down again. Trademark Infringement was just the scapegoat for your original extension. The real reason it was taken down was because it was harming FB's business model for a growing portion of its userbase.
jondubois 10y ago
Silicon Valley companies are an oligopoly - They behave more like collaborators than competitors. This type of behaviour just confirms it. Why does Google care if someone wrote software to block Facebook ads? Maybe they have a secret deal with Facebook to help cleanse the world from ad blockers? Obviously Apple has no skin in the game (they don't rely on ad money) - Maybe that's why they allowed the ad blocker to remain on their store. This is a case of competing companies collaborating with each other at the expense of the consumer because the outcome is mutually-beneficial for the companies. This is anti-capitalist behaviour. If Facebook has a problem with ad blockers, they should take it up with the government instead of collaborating with competitors. That brings back memories of the Google/Apple employee anti-poaching agreement http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poa...
- VikingCoder 10y ago
  They should take it up with the government - rather than having terms of service which allow them to remove content they deem inappropriate? How exactly would going to the government make things better for anyone?
  - jondubois 10y ago
    I don't see how 'Cleaner Facebook' is a brand infringement. Anybody who downloads this app would surely know that the app is not made by Facebook (it doesn't attempt to mislead users into thinking that). There is a clear distinction between claiming that something is made 'For Facebook' vs 'By Facebook".
sickbeard 10y ago
You could have saved yourself some trouble and did the right thing. Changing it from "Cleaner Facebook" to "Cleaner - For Facebook" won't solve any copyright claims against it. I suspect it's mostly the "facebook" part.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  Why won't it solve any copyright claims against it? It did in the Safari Extensions Gallery ... It's quite easy to make required changes when the rules are clear and communication exists.
exelius 10y ago
The "why" is quite simple: Google is an ad company, and the entire reason they developed Chrome was to ensure they had control over the plugin ecosystem to ensure Google-provided ads could never be blocked. But ad blockers are becoming an existential threat to online advertising in general, so Google is likely trying to prevent them from existing. It's a terrible idea because advertisers don't give a fuck about performance. I've ditched Chrome because it's just too slow with all the ads -- at least with Safari and Firefox I can run an ad blocker to cut down on some of the mountains of JavaScript trackers, overlays and animated banner ads that make the browser so effing slow. I know I'm not the only one in this boat.
- newscracker 10y ago
  It's not true that you cannot run an adblocker on Chrome. You can easily install uBlock Origin, uBlock, Adblock Plus, etc., from the extension store. You can also run EFF's Privacy Badger extension to block trackers as an additional measure.
  - exelius 10y ago
    It's more that if these extensions ever became a real threat to Google, they could easily block them since they control the extension store. That tends to keep them in line over the long run.
ejcx 10y ago
I ran in to the exact same problem. I had a chrome extension with >15k users. One day I got an email saying I violated the facebook trademark (my extension blocked the read receipts in facebook messenger and had 'facebook' in the title). I reached out to google and they said reach out to the person who filed the complaint (which was not facebook, it was some agency they pay). I reached out to them, called their phone number, sent them emails, and they were unreachable. I emailed google to say they are unreachable and they won't respond. It is kind of annoying...
diego_moita 10y ago
Isn't this a very old story, repeated a thousand times before? How many people made excellent programs for Windows only to see Microsoft stealing or destroying it by changing APIs or exploring undocumented features of Windows? Ask Borland, Computer Associates, Lotus, PKWare and so many others. How many times has Apple already done the same, both on the Mac and iPhone? And before them both there was IBM. When you develop for controlled platforms and walled gardens you're not creating a business for the long run. What you're doing is free market research for the owners of the garden. Yes, there are exceptions (Intuit, Adobe, Autodesk). But they're exceptions, not the rule.
VOYD 10y ago
A great example of the charade of open source. Sorry you spent so much time on something that seems like it might have been useful, only to run into the black hole of corporate/legal red tape that kills good products. "Do no evil"? "Define do".
stesch 10y ago
And there is my co-worker … constantly on the phone with Google. He is selling ads. And he gets lots of support.
brisraj 10y ago
Google listened to somebody's complaint and then decided to take down this extension. When they have somebody or some mechanism to listen to such complaints, why they don't have anybody to listen to this developer.
- Sylos 10y ago
  I'm not sure that they do actually have someone handling trademark complaints. At least on YouTube, they handle copyright claims by simply taking the video down as soon as a copyright claim comes in and then you can try to appeal afterwards as a YouTuber. But even if they do have a person handling incoming trademark complaints, that doesn't mean that they have someone handling appeals. They can face legal damages, if they don't handle trademark complaints. They can't face legal damages, if they pull through on one too many trademark complaint.
dvh 10y ago
I think the only problem was calling it "Cleaner Facebook", he should have called it "Cleaner Social Media" and he would have no issues.
SZJX 10y ago
Sure the point of this article is about customer support offered by Google. I'd say for their core products such as AdWords, Google are treating their customers with care. It's just that they simply don't give a shit to the majority of their other products. Why would they anyways? They're an ad company, earn their profits through ads almost exclusively, and really just as the founders said themselves, the other projects are much experimental in nature after all. That's just the reality in a business sense.

330 points by andygambles 10y ago

I'm starting to think that if Google had a service where you could pay $10/$20/whatever, and actually get someone reasonably well informed to read what you're saying and direct your issue to the right person, they'd have another significant revenue stream on their hands ;-)

majewsky 10y ago
There is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not collect any data about me without my explicit consent.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  I too would very much like those things. But, how would we know that they were telling the truth about not collecting the data?
  - watwatwatwat 10y ago
    It would be illegal.
  - aembleton 10y ago
    You could compare your search results to a fresh browser on a new IP address.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  Thus far, I accomplish that via: Duck, Duck, Go; NoScript; Privacy Badger; and uBlock Origin. Its silly to need to do all that, but it works well for me.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    uBlock cannot give me a pristine timeline; Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. It's not just about ads, it's about how a tool's design is poisoned by the need for maximal ad revenue. As far as DuckDuckGo goes, I would really love to use them regularly. DDG is even the default search engine on my notebook, but I find myself going to Google in the second step about 90% of the time because DDG's results are too bad. Also, DDG is still running on ads, so it's more of the same, albeit implemented more privacy-consciously.
    - toxican 10y ago
      I love DDG in theory. In practice, I append !g to about half of my searches because the results aren't good enough. Say what you will about the privacy concerns, but Google knowing I frequently search for programming stuff makes finding other programming stuff a much easier process.
      - karrotwaltz 10y ago
        I have this !g routine too, but lately I'm having a much harder time finding good, technical programming answers than before, even on Google. I would love being able to easily blacklist some websites such as stackoverflow and the likes which often have unanswered questions or incomplete answers, and often fills the first 2 Google's result pages.
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      > Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. Settings -> Account, under "Content" unmark "Show me the best Tweets first"
      - 10y ago
- firasd 10y ago
  I think there's at least two reasons. With Twitter or Facebook the problem is that they're dependent on network effects so asking for payments from users is out of the question, they would never get to 100s of millions of users that way. With Google search, you may have more of a point, but I guess in the end Procter and Gamble has more money to spend on individual search transactions for ads than the other parties involved (users searching for sites and website publishers who want to appear in results.) Apple is probably the most successful counter-example but even they are now going to have app store ads.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    Don't have to charge everybody. There can be a free tier ("pay with your data") and a paid tier ("pay with your wallet")
    - ajanuary 10y ago
      It can be complicated. For example, now you're not advertising to your most engaged users, so advertising on the service becomes less valuable.
  - toxican 10y ago
    Over the years I've seen the reaction to a lot of those "Facebook is going to start charging money!" fake posts and it's very negative. I can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if twitter or Facebook offered a "pro" experience. People don't respond well to free things becoming paid, even if the free version remains largely the same.
- baldfat 10y ago
  You can pay less then 10€ a month to get ad free YouTube and Music. Best money I spend every month.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Great. Now they should offer the same for the search engine.
    - robin_reala 10y ago
      I think you can? https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com . Not that I’ve tried it - I’m not allowed to in the UK.
      - Globz 10y ago
        I get this error when I try to sign-up : Error fetching data. Please try again later.
      - Veen 10y ago
        Contributor is only for sites that use Google's ad products. I don't think it works in Search. Essentially, it's a way for a site's users to bid for its ad spots. If you bid more than the advertisers, you don't have to see the ads. It's quite a clever idea really, but I don't think it has much uptake from publishers.
        bduerst 10y ago
        I use it and it probably covers about 65-75% of ads I see, and almost 100% on news websites. I've also seen it work in apps. It's too bad there wasn't some way to have it cross over networks too.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      They have adds on Google Search? I swear my mind automatically just remove them subconsciously. Also you could just use an add block
- chiefalchemist 10y ago
  Support costs money. Big money. Just as FB, IG, TW, etc. For the most part, they all suck.
- red_admiral 10y ago
  My guess here is that the subset of users who would be willing to pay a monthly subscription is strongly correlated with the subset that advertisers are interested in targeting most. If a site got say 10% of users to pay a subscription, their value to advertisers - and hence their advertising revenue - might drop a lot more than 10%, leaving them with a net loss.
  - watwatwatwat 10y ago
    I run uBlock origin and would pay for a monthly subscription.
  - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
    That's a very interesting point. I never thought of that and I think you're right.
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    It seems to me the opposite. If someone cares enough to pay for the content directly ,I suspect that person is the one who will be going out of the way to avoid ads and tracking in the first place.
    - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
      The trouble is that at this stage hoovering up customer data is in Google's DNA. As far as my perceptions go all a paid option means is that now they attach my credit card details to their data on me.
  - lliiffee 10y ago
    That's a good point, but it also seems strongly correlated with those that run ad/privacy blockers. (Even with such a blocker, perhaps the data collected is still valuable, though?) My instinct is that by selling an ad and tracking-free site, they would be indicating that the ads and tracking are a bad thing, as opposed to the party line that it's all "to deliver better services to you".
- spot 10y ago
  google does not sell your data. this is such a tired canard.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    Selling access to the user that created the data is the same damn thing for the end user. It's just that in the way Google does it, Google gets paid over and over instead of one time selling a static list.
    - spot 10y ago
      not it isn't. if you sell the data then it goes into 3rd party hands and out of google's control and they can do all kinds of bad things with it.
      - majewsky 10y ago
        And what exactly prevents them from doing the bad things themselves? What is the inherent reason that I should trust Google more than any other business?
        spot 10y ago
        they have a track record.
        karmachameleon2 10y ago
        A track record of doing bad things behind the scenes, perhaps?
      - mhurron 10y ago
        'Bad things' are tracking (Google does this), targeted ads (Google does this), selling access to information so others can target ads and drop tracking (Google does this), allowing Governments access to your activities (Google does this) Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here? The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  The problem is that Google does not want that messaging. If they collected money in exchange for not violating your privacy, they'd be acknowledging that what they do, is actually violating your privacy. At times, Google has even tried to use the rhetoric that providing you more relevant ads is a service to you that improves your experience on the Internet. (LOL) Basically, the income they'd gain from offering this would pale in comparison of the reputation they'd lose (and following that, users) from admitting what they do is bad for you.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  The problem is that by paying you are also identifying yourself and what user data would be better than clearly identified user data? Second problem is that there is potentially more money in you than this proposed relatively low amount because you are probably spending a lot more in a month and it is big attraction to become a middleman in every transaction you make.
- jeffmould 10y ago
  A little off-topic, but I was just talking about that Twitter idea the other day with someone. He had asked if I thought Twitter would go private or sell off. I said that Twitter should look at ways to monetize their stream outside of ads. Like you, I would gladly pay a couple bucks a month to customize my feed how I want it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
fractal618 10y ago
Assuming one person could serve 50 customers in this manner. And they were to earn 50k/year. The monthly fee for this service would be about $80.
- newscracker 10y ago
  Your assumption that one person can serve 50 customers a month seems to be quite low. That comes to spending about four hours per customer to respond, track and provide a resolution or workaround! Of course, the duration would vary depending on what kind of support channel is used (phone vs. chat vs. email). You also seem to be assuming that all paying customers would have major issues that can only be resolved by working with other teams, getting a new resolution or change implemented, etc. In reality, most customer cases can be resolved quickly by searching for documentation and pointing them to it and/or explaining things better (and improving the support documentation along side when necessary). I would assume that at least 30 customers can be served per eight hour working day. That's spending more than 15 minutes per customer and is usually adequate (on average) even for phone support! With my extrapolation here, which is again just an example (real scenarios would be different), the basic cost incurred by the service provider for the salary alone comes to about $7 per user per month. Add for overheads and it would still be fine to charge $10 or $12 per month. If service tiers are used, then there could be multiple slabs, mechanisms for support and turnaround times - all these would bring down the actual cost further.
bussiere 10y ago
we can also imagine that the people who get the message get a part of the money. And the more you pay the more your message is higlighted or promote to these people.
dboreham 10y ago
It would cost much more than $10/$20 to provide that service, so you'd be in "whatever" territory.
- criddell 10y ago
  Then charge $500. Whatever it needs to cost, charge it.
zenopopovici 10y ago
I would gladly pay for developer support. I do it for Apple. (I'm the original author).

chinhodado 10y ago

These stories are too common. Google is mortified of trademark/IP violation, so if you made the mistake of naming your thing wrong and got reported, good luck getting help with it. On the Android app store it's even worse, once taken down if you want to submit the app again under a different name you have to make a new app package, which means forfeiting all the existing users, reviews, ratings, etc.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

Email the Bing team and ask them to feature a "Unresolved Google Complaint of the Day" with a timer ticking to show how long the problem has been left unresolved with a link to your blog post - on the Bing home page. That might get you somewhere :-)

chris_wot 10y ago

Meh, this will be he death of Google. Check out their "Collaborative Inbox". It's a disaster and totally unusable. I work for a company that tried to use it, but the feedback was so bad despite management buy-in it is totally unused, and will never be used by any user.

baldfat 10y ago

If you write a extension to remove ads from FaceBook and your user base has grown from 4,000 to 24,000 users and it just got taken down I feel your lucky. I am not saying it is good, bad or indifferent but someone is going to notice you and make some noise when you remove ads from FaceBook and you have FaceBook in your name. The communication side fo things is clearly bad on Google's side. Similar to the YouTube demonetized videos fiasco. Google needs more PR and Communication people.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

nmstoker 10y ago

It seems recently like anything inbound to Google goes into /dev/null! A number of us have been trying to get a response regarding Google Apps accounts with Play Music, and we're paying customers. There's no response to the forum https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/play/86WVa8b_3i4/9kDu_0CaAwAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&u... nor when I put it on Twitter and when a load of us tried direct feedback via the app, that still hasn't got any response. Clearly their model needs to rely on limited user support and that's okay, provided there's a good service with some human presence. But it's getting to be a problem...

FussyZeus 10y ago
You'd think if they could blow billions of dollars on tons of industries they have no intention of actually entering, they could find a few million somewhere to hire some CSRs. Google's gotten big enough now where they aren't incentivized to give a shit.
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company." -– Saturday Night Live, September 18, 1976. Hey, fifty years. (So, are we getting Baby Googles and Facebooks in another ten years, or are those times behind us?)
  - aminorex 10y ago
    More likely the multinationals will breakup the governments this time around.
adzicg 10y ago
anecdotally, you can get good support if you're a customer, but there's a big difference between a customer and a user. I've heard (not confirmed personally, just overheard at conferences), that if you spend enough on adwords to register on their radar as a customer, things are easy to get sorted even if they're nowhere adwords related. the big difference is that for the most part, google users/developers/... are not really customers.

chiefalchemist 10y ago

What's that? Google? Poor support? Poor service? Say it isn't so. To be clear, #Sarcasm :) Google's genius, isn't so much what they do. It's also that they've lowered the bar when it comes to expectations. They understand that designing and building products is relatively easy. The unknowns are in time knowable. On the other hand , reality-based humans drive Google crazy. They are, evidently, to be avoided at all costs. In that context, it's "interesting" how it's working out for Google+, eh. Surprised?

wernercd 10y ago
In some aspects, maybe... in other aspects, they've raised the bar to heights that others can't/won't reach. In a company that has hundreds of products, is that really so hard to believe? Mega successes... mega failures. Still massively successful? Look at Apple. They were at the top with the iPod. Then the iPhone. Then the iPad. Massively successful. Yet they still release turd products like one button mouse, Apple TV and the G4 Cube. Or Microsoft with their massively successful products and massively unsuccessful turds. It's not like other companies don't have horrible customer support... Nope... just Google. /rolls eyes
- jamespo 10y ago
  Google's customer support isn't horrible, it's just not there
- mattkevan 10y ago
  The difference is that Apple's support in general (everyone drops the ball occasionally) is very good. Millions of people out there with iPhones, but they can always get support for them if they need it.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > one button mouse Although I have some serious issues with Apple (e.g. iPhone 6 plus), Apple hasn't released a one button mouse in a long time. They all have two buttons, just check the preferences. Frankly, Apple TV is actually a pretty good product since my technophobe Mom can use it for its intended purpose. I still don't like the whole remote policy, but that's a developer thing and frankly Apple really isn't the most friendly company to developers either.

hota_mazi 10y ago

> I received an email from Google telling me that my extension violated Facebook’s trademark What did you expect? Any service, not just Google, will shut down apps and extensions for similar reasons. This has nothing to do with > I just don’t think it is worth it to put any amount of effort to build something on a platform that turned out to be so unreliable.

dordoka 10y ago
I do agree that any service might honor the takedown request for the registered trademark infringement. But what the author refers to is completely another issue: the complete lack of support from Google. The extension author complied with the request. Tried to contact several times an only got canned responses. I guess Google doesn't care much about people that develop for their platform. At least that's what I got from the blog post. Therefore, author's conclusion about developing for that platform seens right.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Additionally, how the hell is this trademark infringement? We've been using the "Software Name for X" formula for decades to refer to programs that operate in conjunction with other systems. In this case this extension only works with Facebook, therefore the Facebook name is more or less required to describe the function of the product with any accuracy. It's not like he's written a third party app for Facebook or we made his own social network called Facebook, he's done nothing to damage the value of the trademark. I'm generally a pro IP guy but this seems extremely draconian.
  - dordoka 10y ago
    I was just reproducing the term trademark infringement from the article. I also do agree that FB here is somehow taking advantage of said laws to send to /dev/null the extension that renders one of their revenue streams ineffective. I'm no expert in US trademark laws by any means, maybe they're entitled to leverage it for these kind of cases.
- 10y ago

Buetol 10y ago

That's what you get when you centralize things. A better thing could be a community-owned store for the chrome extensions (and a community-owner browser). Something like the Mozilla Add-ons site but for Chromium-only extensions. Or being able to add you own stores in Chromium, would be even nice for companies who want to distribute private extensions.

eveningcoffee 10y ago
The problem is actually that Chrome is a thing at all. Even greater problem is a lot of developers, who should know better, recommending it en masse to laypersons.

Mahn 10y ago

> I just want you to think twice before creating a revenue stream based on the Chrome Web Store. This is probably not a good idea in general today anyway, with Google phasing it out for Windows/Linux/macOS.

dgacmu 10y ago
Chrome Apps are being phased out for Win/Lin/Mac, but I don't think there's a change to extensions or the store itself?

edent 10y ago

Not providing any meaningful support is Google's business model - you can see them talk about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I > Google estimates that they would need to hire over 20,000 customer service people to deal with 1 query every three years from each customer. So it has decided - as far as possible - to employ zero people and rely on algorithms. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-conundrum/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-c...

adamc 10y ago
Which is a really good argument for never developing for the Google eco-system. Because you can't afford to invest in a platform where if something goes wrong you're just f*cked.
- pyvpx 10y ago
  to be fair, for some parts of the eco-system, and for some values of investment, you can pay for support.
- malka 10y ago
  Agreed. At least on other corporate eco systems (Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), if you are a paying customer, you have great support.
  - colemannerd 10y ago
    Absolutely! You only have to use 10 year old technology for that support.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Great! It's had time for a lot of the bugs to get knocked out, and most of the rest to be well enough known for fixes to be pretty solidly understood.
- Touche 10y ago

deanclatworthy 10y ago

What you are doing not only violated Facebook's trademark (good luck calling it fair use), but it's also against Facebook's ToS. They have actively gone after extension authors who alter the Facebook experience and even deactivated their accounts. Rightly or wrongly, when you sign up to a service you are bound by the conditions they set out. In this case, making an extension to block advertising is probably not going to end well for you.

piyush_soni 10y ago
But then, aren't Adblock Plus/uBlock Origin violating the ToS by altering the 'Facebook experience' as well? They're still there on the Web store.
- bjz_ 10y ago
  They don't have 'Facebook' in the name. Probably much easier for them to go after trademark infringement.
  - piyush_soni 10y ago
    Yes, that's what I meant by my comment that hiding ads is probably ok for them, it's only the name that they're concerned about.
Algent 10y ago
I can see the obvious trademark issue since he used the facebook name. But I don't get why you bring up the ToS. Those are irrelevant outside of FB's website. ToS =/= Law.
- pas 10y ago
  Facebook could close the accounts of people who use AdBlockers.
  - Sylos 10y ago

piyush_soni 10y ago

The exact same thing happened to me. I have a fairly successful Firefox add-on named 'Yahoo Mail Hide Ad Panel'[0], and it is one of the top-rated extensions on Mozilla's Add-on store. When I wrote it for Chrome, they removed it apparently after a complaint from Yahoo. Understandable, but I asked them how are the other extensions containing the same name not removed? No answer. I asked if "Hide Ad Panel for Yahoo Mail" would work, no response. I just gave up and decided not to write that extension for Chrome, just like OP did. [0] : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yahoomailhideadpanel/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yahoomailhide...

tobltobs 10y ago
I guess it is not using "Facebook" or in your case "Yahoo" in your extension name, but changing the content for a user of a Facebook or Yahoo page is what is triggering the remove of the extension. If it is against the TOS (or Platform Policy) I don't see how else they are supposed to react if the get a complain.
- piyush_soni 10y ago
  It's not the removal of add-on that pissed me off, but the lack of proper response on what would be the acceptable resolution. Not using the name would change the meaning as both of these are not general purpose ad blockers. Had they replied saying "for <their name>" is ok, I wouldn't have removed it. At least they could have replied with a flat 'No' to make things clear.
  - Merovius 10y ago
    I quote: > We cannot prevent from being "Flagged" and unable to reveal the reason of flagging. What do you expect from them? They openly said they can not divulge more information about this. There is no "response on what would be the acceptable resolution" that is more proper, unless you assume they are straight out lying.
- barkbro 10y ago
  I don't see how an add-on posted on the Chrome store is subject to Facebook's ToS. It might be aiding people in breaking the ToS, but is there really a law against that?

uptown 10y ago

"I got quite a few offers to sell it, so others could push advertising trough it." Makes you wonder how many of my installed extensions have changed owners during my use.

alimbada 10y ago

This is the first I've heard of this extension. I'd be interested in sideloading it using Chrome's Developer mode if the developer made it available for download separate of the Chrome Web Store.

revelation 10y ago

You use "Facebook" in the name of your extension to lure users into installing it. Google tells you you can't use the trademark. You again use the trademark. Google gives up on your spammy ways. They seem to have done everything right here.

njloof 10y ago
Register it as "for FB" -- users will know what it stands for.
- nkozyra 10y ago
  If you read the original email, the complaint also lists "FB."
zenopopovici 10y ago
4 years later... it's a cleaner that works only of Facebook. It's not a lure or anything. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. (I'm the author of the post).
Sylos 10y ago
Apple approved "Cleaner - for Facebook" when the author had gotten a complaint there. No reason to believe that Google wouldn't approve of it. The two companies are after all still under the same laws. Also, are you seriously telling me that making a different suggestion once, which still contains the trademark is spammy? Any reasonable customer service would have just responded that this still isn't alright either, maybe even suggested a few names, which would not infringe the trademark.

andreapaiola 10y ago

Over 1 month and counting to update a Google Web Font (Mada) https://github.com/khaledhosny/mada/issues/11#issuecomment-244472491 https://github.com/khaledhosny/mada/issues/11#issuecomment-2...

pavlov 10y ago
Sorry to say, but don't get your hopes up... It seems like Google doesn't care about ever updating the fonts they distribute. The author of Crimson Text, a very popular free web font, complains about it on his Github readme [1]: "While you are looking at the new, improved version, Google Fonts continues to offer the clumsy-looking original and has not heeded the repeated pleas for an upgrade." [1] https://github.com/skosch/Crimson https://github.com/skosch/Crimson
- andreapaiola 10y ago
  Well... I've downloaded a newer version and now it's local... actually I have no hopes and don't care anymore... ;)

Jerry2 10y ago

>My requests got closed with a “Thanks for your feedback.” canned response. This is a prime example of why I don't use my Gmail anymore and why I pay for email. I've read plenty of horror stories of how people lost their Gmail accounts for all kinds of reasons. Most of the losses were completely unrelated to Gmail but related to perceived 'abuse' of Google's other services like Youtube (if your YT account gets shut down for 'copyright abuse', your Gmail will be gone as well). Some people lost Gmail accounts over Google Play store apps they submitted. Basically, if they close your account, your Gmail is linked to it and it's gone too. That scared the heck out of me because I had my whole life in there. And there's just no way to contact Google's support... unless you know someone at Google. Author should feel lucky they didn't close his account over this.

Betabot101 10y ago
I've recently started to move a lot of the services I use away from Google provided services. Who'd you go with instead of Gmail for email?
- KiwiCoder 10y ago
  Not OP, but I moved all of my email from free Gmail to paid Fastmail about 2 years ago, and I've not had a moment of regret. I send quite a lot of email for work and other things and I have what I think is a higher-than-average number of email addresses to manage. One adjustment I made - I now archive older emails to avoid extra storage costs, which in turn means that searching for older emails is slightly more hassle. Fastmail's web interface and mobile app are not quite as slick (as gmail) but this isn't a big deal for me personally.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    Can't you just use another e-mail app, like for example K-9 Mail, with it?
    - KiwiCoder 10y ago
      I used K-9 for many months and it was just OK. The FastMail app was not a huge improvement (over K-9) but it was still an improvement, at least in my experience. From memory K-9 didn't handle multiple "send-from" accounts as competently as the FastMail app, and there were other quirks that became more irritating over time.

tdash 10y ago

Slightly off topic. But here's another story of how unresponsive software giants are and how how helpless the users are in most cases http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://the-ken.com/the-unbelievable-story-of-a-facebook-impostor/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

gizmodo59 10y ago

Google is highly unreliable for developers. The number of products that are discontinued are staggering. Not trying to be pessimistic but unfortunately many feels like that.

intralizee 10y ago

I've had good support with real Google support "people" when using Google's Cloud Service. It may just be that the extension falls under the category of ad blocking and they choose to ignore for beneficial reasons over actually replying. It would be curious to see the same thing happening towards a popular extension that doesn't deal with ads.

nabla9 10y ago

The economic model for writing apps for closed distribution platforms, or -stores is kind of serfdom without manorial courts. You sign of your rights for being heard or listened. You are in the mercy of the platform owner. From the point of platform owner this kind of indifference and arbitrariness is justified with low cost and it's not going to go away. They only need to keep the frequency of occurrences within acceptable limits.

kowdermeister 10y ago

This story has some parody feeling to it :) Just to recap: 1) Receives a take down notice for trademark violation 2) Changes name from "Cleaner Facebook" TO "Cleaner — for Facebook" :) 3) Gets surprised as taken down again Let me suggest a few names _without_ Facebook in the title: - Social facelift - Clean UI - Fresh look for social media

al_chemist 10y ago
Except "for X" way is suggested by Google in their "copyright infrigement" email.
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  I think you confused the mails ... it's not.
zenopopovici 10y ago
You got it wrong. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in this way was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google.
- atombath 10y ago
  Devil's advocate: it isn't in Google's interest to give you legal advice.
- kowdermeister 10y ago
  > If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it Most of programming btw is like that. Google throw an exception with a better error than "undefined is not an object". Maybe it's easy for me from the outside to pinpoint the problem, but it's usually about reading between the lines. Their support is indeed poor, but you are not entitled anything and probably the lesson here is not to build anything serious on 3rd party platforms where you are unsure about licensing, legal questions. I've been burned once by SoundCloud legal team for using their public API.

nkozyra 10y ago

> After 3 months of trying everything I could think of, I give up. Frankly, it would have taken just one thing - remove references to Facebook. I know that's basically amounting to doing some linguistic gymnastics in order to express what your extension does, but you _did_ in fact use a trademark without their consent, and ostensibly in a way that reduces their revenue stream. This really isn't a Graffino v Google issue. Expecting "due process" is also an unrealistic complaint in this scenario. > I just want you to think twice before creating a revenue stream based on the Chrome Web Store. Forget the Chrome Web Store. Think twice before creating a revenue stream based on any service that can pull out the rug at any moment. If you don't control your own destiny things like this can and will happen.

zenopopovici 10y ago
So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. It's also a cleaner that works only of Facebook. Google reviewed it and approved it 4 years ago. The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. I was never told what to do or how to change it so that my users would still recognize it. Also changing its name in "Cleaner - For Facebook" was suggested (and accepted) for the Safari extension by the Safari Gallery Team. If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google. Thing is that they basically told me I can't do anything if the original complainant gives his go-ahead ... after 3 months of canned responses. I agree with your second point. (I'm the author of the post).
- nkozyra 10y ago
  > So they told me I was infringing 4 years later... when there are numerous apps in the store doing the same. This is not a great defense. We know from the trail you presented that someone from FB's legal/compliance team found your extension, not the others, likely due to its visibility and popularity. That doesn't mean the other extensions are in the clear. It just means they weren't on FB's radar. > The extension is free. There is no advertising. I don't make any profit. I'm sorry, but that's irrelevant. The complaint wasn't that you were profiting from the ™, just that you were using it. > If I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I can't fix it. This is not about TM infringement, but the total lack of communication by Google I cannot disagree more. They told you what the problem was and the originating email explained that quite explicitly. You did not have permission to use the trademark Facebook (or FB). That's it. If you removed those protected trademarks, it would have been a different story.

ptero 10y ago

I am not surprised that Google took this down when reported for copyright/IP violation (whether true or made up) and that emails from a relatively small project are only getting canned responses (I wish it were different, but realistically Google is not going to change). I think the only way to change this is to get advocacy online to get noticed. And as someone else said, if you build plugins for a company-managed software, you are at their mercy WRT to disabling it at any time (the same is true for a community-based software as well, but the process is usually transparent and more aligned with users and developers needs -- no blanket "because copyright" rejections).

kelvin0 10y ago

Google went from 'do no evil' to 'do no support'. It feels like talking to a refrigerator when you desperately need support for a service you are paying for. Been there, done that I will never rely on google for anything remotely useful again (apart from www searches).

matthewhall 10y ago

Your extension should have gotten pulled... you are stealing from the developers who put ads on their products. Ad blockers are evil. You as a developer should understand this

zenopopovici 10y ago
I know. I'm so evil...:)

savrajsingh 10y ago

Google suspended adwords for my shareware software site and removed it from the index because I didn't post a EULA. I posted it, but now they're claiming I need 'more original content' -- the whole site is original. Not sure how or why innocent developers are being caught up in the dragnet obviously intended for spammers / scammers, but it seems those folks continue to operate freely while the innocent are being locked down.

al_chemist 10y ago

My app "LoL Helper" was also copyright infringing League of Legends. Not sure if I can laugh out loud anymore.

zenopopovici 10y ago

I'm really surprised this got so much traction..., I didn't submit this to HN. Baffled that so many users went trough roughly the same experience. (I'm the original author)

chris_wot 10y ago
Great project - is this in a repo we can fork?
- zenopopovici 10y ago
  It's not opensource. I would have to rewrite it to open source it. And write some docs. I don't know if I have the time for it. I can't release it in the form it is now. I'm really ashamed of the code I wrote a few years back :).
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Don't worry about it! The code probably isn't nearly as bad as you think, and anyway it can be improved through PRs... Did you consider open-sourcing it from the beginning? If so, why did you decide not to do that?

ythl 10y ago

Before I even read the article I knew the extension was an ad-blocker. All these people make ad-destroying apps and extensions and then act flabbergasted when big companies relying on ad-revenue don't like that and file complaints to get them taken down.

zenopopovici 10y ago
But it's not why it was taken down ... :)
- ythl 10y ago
  Try an experiment, then. Create a new account and submit the extension under a new name unrelated to facebook. Grow your userbase to a size significant enough that FB notices. I am betting that FB will get it taken down again. Trademark Infringement was just the scapegoat for your original extension. The real reason it was taken down was because it was harming FB's business model for a growing portion of its userbase.

jondubois 10y ago

Silicon Valley companies are an oligopoly - They behave more like collaborators than competitors. This type of behaviour just confirms it. Why does Google care if someone wrote software to block Facebook ads? Maybe they have a secret deal with Facebook to help cleanse the world from ad blockers? Obviously Apple has no skin in the game (they don't rely on ad money) - Maybe that's why they allowed the ad blocker to remain on their store. This is a case of competing companies collaborating with each other at the expense of the consumer because the outcome is mutually-beneficial for the companies. This is anti-capitalist behaviour. If Facebook has a problem with ad blockers, they should take it up with the government instead of collaborating with competitors. That brings back memories of the Google/Apple employee anti-poaching agreement http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poa...

VikingCoder 10y ago
They should take it up with the government - rather than having terms of service which allow them to remove content they deem inappropriate? How exactly would going to the government make things better for anyone?
- jondubois 10y ago
  I don't see how 'Cleaner Facebook' is a brand infringement. Anybody who downloads this app would surely know that the app is not made by Facebook (it doesn't attempt to mislead users into thinking that). There is a clear distinction between claiming that something is made 'For Facebook' vs 'By Facebook".

sickbeard 10y ago

You could have saved yourself some trouble and did the right thing. Changing it from "Cleaner Facebook" to "Cleaner - For Facebook" won't solve any copyright claims against it. I suspect it's mostly the "facebook" part.

zenopopovici 10y ago
Why won't it solve any copyright claims against it? It did in the Safari Extensions Gallery ... It's quite easy to make required changes when the rules are clear and communication exists.

exelius 10y ago

The "why" is quite simple: Google is an ad company, and the entire reason they developed Chrome was to ensure they had control over the plugin ecosystem to ensure Google-provided ads could never be blocked. But ad blockers are becoming an existential threat to online advertising in general, so Google is likely trying to prevent them from existing. It's a terrible idea because advertisers don't give a fuck about performance. I've ditched Chrome because it's just too slow with all the ads -- at least with Safari and Firefox I can run an ad blocker to cut down on some of the mountains of JavaScript trackers, overlays and animated banner ads that make the browser so effing slow. I know I'm not the only one in this boat.

newscracker 10y ago
It's not true that you cannot run an adblocker on Chrome. You can easily install uBlock Origin, uBlock, Adblock Plus, etc., from the extension store. You can also run EFF's Privacy Badger extension to block trackers as an additional measure.
- exelius 10y ago
  It's more that if these extensions ever became a real threat to Google, they could easily block them since they control the extension store. That tends to keep them in line over the long run.

ejcx 10y ago

I ran in to the exact same problem. I had a chrome extension with >15k users. One day I got an email saying I violated the facebook trademark (my extension blocked the read receipts in facebook messenger and had 'facebook' in the title). I reached out to google and they said reach out to the person who filed the complaint (which was not facebook, it was some agency they pay). I reached out to them, called their phone number, sent them emails, and they were unreachable. I emailed google to say they are unreachable and they won't respond. It is kind of annoying...

diego_moita 10y ago

Isn't this a very old story, repeated a thousand times before? How many people made excellent programs for Windows only to see Microsoft stealing or destroying it by changing APIs or exploring undocumented features of Windows? Ask Borland, Computer Associates, Lotus, PKWare and so many others. How many times has Apple already done the same, both on the Mac and iPhone? And before them both there was IBM. When you develop for controlled platforms and walled gardens you're not creating a business for the long run. What you're doing is free market research for the owners of the garden. Yes, there are exceptions (Intuit, Adobe, Autodesk). But they're exceptions, not the rule.

VOYD 10y ago

A great example of the charade of open source. Sorry you spent so much time on something that seems like it might have been useful, only to run into the black hole of corporate/legal red tape that kills good products. "Do no evil"? "Define do".

stesch 10y ago

And there is my co-worker … constantly on the phone with Google. He is selling ads. And he gets lots of support.

brisraj 10y ago

Google listened to somebody's complaint and then decided to take down this extension. When they have somebody or some mechanism to listen to such complaints, why they don't have anybody to listen to this developer.

Sylos 10y ago
I'm not sure that they do actually have someone handling trademark complaints. At least on YouTube, they handle copyright claims by simply taking the video down as soon as a copyright claim comes in and then you can try to appeal afterwards as a YouTuber. But even if they do have a person handling incoming trademark complaints, that doesn't mean that they have someone handling appeals. They can face legal damages, if they don't handle trademark complaints. They can't face legal damages, if they pull through on one too many trademark complaint.

dvh 10y ago

I think the only problem was calling it "Cleaner Facebook", he should have called it "Cleaner Social Media" and he would have no issues.

SZJX 10y ago

Sure the point of this article is about customer support offered by Google. I'd say for their core products such as AdWords, Google are treating their customers with care. It's just that they simply don't give a shit to the majority of their other products. Why would they anyways? They're an ad company, earn their profits through ads almost exclusively, and really just as the founders said themselves, the other projects are much experimental in nature after all. That's just the reality in a business sense.