16 ms·

Our Chrome Extension Is Safe

328 points by imran3740 6y ago

DrJaws 6y ago
They could also tell what was wrong to the customers. 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.
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  A Google reviewer can select one of three canned responses to tell a developer what's wrong. https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-reply-in-gmail/ https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-... Oh, you wanted an artisanal hand-crafted response unique to each individual situation? That's not scalable!
  - userbinator 6y ago
    I abhor such... dehumanising (for lack of better term) "features" whose advertised benefit is saving time, but has a subtle effect of gradually delegating decisionmaking to someone or something else --- whose goals may not be in your best interests. Every time you "didn't have to think" is a time when someone else did the thinking for you. Take that too far and there is no you left in your life.
  - antonvs 6y ago
    You linked to a blog about an optional feature of Gmail which all Gmail users see. What does that have to do with how reviewers can respond?
raybb 6y ago
Previous discussion where Pushbullet was worried about being killed off the chrome store: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874
deleted 6y ago
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Someone1234 6y ago
It is good that this was resolved, but not so good that they had to shame Google on HN/Twitter to get it looked at. 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.
- oefrha 6y ago
  > I understand that the Chrome extension store is free Pretty sure it’s not free, I had to pay a nominal $5 fee ages ago, and looks like that hasn’t changed. https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish#pay-the-developer-signup-fee https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish#pay-the-develo... Even found a recent news article reporting that now you need to pay the fee immediately on signup as opposed to when you publish the first extension/app. https://9to5google.com/2020/03/12/chrome-web-store-fee/ https://9to5google.com/2020/03/12/chrome-web-store-fee/ (In case anyone wonders why $5 is even worth mentioning — if you’re a teenager in a third world country you probably have neither the fund nor a credit card to publish a Chrome extension.)
  - jiveturkey 6y ago
    If you don't have $5, how do you have the resources to develop an extension?
    - smilekzs 6y ago
      Having to pay US Dollars can still be a big hurdle
    - oefrha 6y ago
      No first hand experience, but I’ve heard stories of African kids doing impressive tech stuff using very limited resources. Presumably quite a few have access to school computers these days? Developing extensions is free as long as you have access to a computer. Anyway, not having access to a credit card (also need to be capable of international payment, which is not a given) is a much bigger issue than not having $5.
RHSeeger 6y ago
> All of that attention resulted in our issue being resolved. This is good for us. It is not yet clear if the attention will help other developers that are struggling with similar vague rejections. 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.
- wpietri 6y ago
  It seems like there are two ways to handle an exceptional condition. One is to say, "Gosh, this is bad! We'll fix it and move on!" And the other is to say, "This is bad, and it's telling us something about the system we've built. So let's fix it for this person, then find the systemic flaw and fix it so we stop doing this in the future." Sadly, a lot of companies will look at a PR problem and do just enough to make their pain go away, without ever saying, "Wait, are their people we should care about besides ourselves?" It's disappointing.
- rapind 6y ago
  The end result being a far less permissive extension. The permissions they required were insane but our entire focus is on Google's customer service. Now that we all agree that Google's process sucks, can we talk about how insane it is to even have this level or permissions available for request in the first place?
  - csours 6y ago
    Google owns that side of it too. If Google thinks you are over-reaching in your access to permissions, they can simply choose not to provide access to the resources behind those permissions.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    It’s not insane to have a *://*/* permission, since things like generic content blockers have to be able to modify any page (you definitely need to take great care when installing these extensions, which unfortunately most users aren’t equipped to assess, which is why extension security is such a headache and stringent review is welcome). On the other hand, this particular extension requesting this access just because they weren’t told not to is more of a wtf.
HackOfAllTrades 6y ago
So what was the actual change they were required to make?
- sp332 6y ago
  They made the two changes they said they would make in the previous blog post. https://twitter.com/pushbullet/status/1260692846111318028 https://twitter.com/pushbullet/status/1260692846111318028 So one or both of those.
- wffurr 6y ago
  According to Dotproto, the changes they made in their first re-submission were sufficient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874
  - ShamelessC 6y ago
    Makes you wonder - was there even a problem in the first place? Or were they just trying to silently kill this extension but failed due to this going viral? I understand they were using a very broad wildcard for permission on websites they could access. I'm glad they narrowed that down. But after they did, they still needed this to blow up in order to get an actual response.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      > Makes you wonder - was there even a problem in the first place? YES. > I understand they were using a very broad wildcard for permission on websites they could access That is a problem.
      - saurik 6y ago
        But we still don't know if that was the actual reason the app got pulled, as if that were the case it should have been trivial for a computer to notice it was fixed; do you not see how that sucks?
schoolornot 6y ago
Can someone from Google use a throwaway to explain why the hell their support is garbage. From the Chrome store, to G-Suite, to Pixel Support. It's just awful.
- asdf21 6y ago
  Always has been for 10+ years now. As a former Call Center Director, it's pretty amazing to me how much bad-will these massive companies are willing to foment by not running their support correctly. It's not that hard / expensive guys... you can hire great support employees for $20 / hour all across America.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Support is also one of the most remote friendly forms of work available, and often benefits from spreading workers over multiple time zones.
    - rapind 6y ago
      Much of customer support is like the close doors button on an elevator. It doesn't actually do anything, but makes you feel like it does.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    It's much more expensive than not having it. Back of the napkin math for 1 billion users and a 1:100 support staff ratio comes out to around 5.8 billion dollars/yr.
    - asdf21 6y ago
      This is developer support, not user support.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    Are these great $20/hr support engineers the kind I often deal with over email or phone, who usually employ canned responses, can’t solve off-script problems, tend to repeat the same unhelpful responses, and are sometimes indistinguishable from bots?
asdf21 6y ago
So... what was the issue?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wffurr 6y ago
  According to Dotproto, the changes they made in their first re-submission were sufficient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  It appears there wasn't one for the second rejection, the process is just completely broken.
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
I imagine the value that Google gets from chrome extensions is a small fraction of what they would get from Android apps. 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.
- robotnikman 6y ago
  Even Android App developers face the same thing. When they upload their app to the app store some bot looks at it, and can reject it for whatever reason and only provide a vague explanation. I've seen stories on /r/androiddev of developers apps getting rejected for uncertain reasons, or even having their whole account entirely banned. Unless you are a massive company like Netflix or Spotify you will have not way of contacting a human for support. I've thought of messing around with developing an Android app and uploading it to the app store just to gain some experience and try something different, but the fact that my whole google account could be banned just because a bot thought my app was bad for whatever reason is scary.
- fouric 6y ago
  I think that you're assuming that the number of apps that can be reviewed by a human remains constant over time. If Google hires programmers to do the review process, they can identify patterns, develop new techniques, and build tools to accelerate the process. Additionally, I bet that they're expecting the value of the Chrome store to increase over time, which compounds on the effect above.
aspenmayer 6y ago
What happened to the iOS app? I have it, but it isn't available in the US App Store anymore, nor is it linked to from the site's page anymore. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pushbullet/id810352052 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pushbullet/id810352052
- TheArcane 6y ago
  They unpublished it after refusing to allow a "Sign in with Apple" option on their login page. https://old.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/eirc1m/not_available_on_ios/fcxybyu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/eirc1m/not_avai... The dev said the iOS side of things are irrelevant for them anyway since most of their users are on Android, which is frankly disheartening since there's no alternative for iPhone users with linux desktops now
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Wow. That's pretty lame of them. I don't agree with their logic, but I do agree with following the user base. I will continue to use the version I have. I could probably find a way to share the .app if anyone needs it. Found pushover.net which seems like a decent (paid) alternative. We need an open-source version of this kind of functionality, maybe using ActivityPub? Self-hosted option with Google integration for a start, and since everyone needs to have Sign in with Apple for iOS, I guess that too. Might as well add Facebook login support.
    - ufmace 6y ago
      Not so sure about lame of PushBullet. It feels more lame of all of the major tech players to be essentially fighting over how much they can extort out of developers using their monopoly powers. Facebook seems to say, you have 1 week to update your sign-in integration code to the latest version (or I guess they get cut off from Facebook API or something?). Apple says you must support Apple sign-in, or you won't be allowed on our App Store, without with it's nearly impossible to get your app on an iPhone. Google says guess what we want based on our vague emails and meaningless responses, or we remove your extension/app from the store, making it nearly impossible to use on Chrome. Geez, it's like Microsoft is the good guy of the tech majors here.
benatkin 6y ago
I don't think this is proper use of Chrome extensions, and it hearkens back to the days of search toolbars, like the Ask and Yahoo toolbars being installed by Java. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2940688/java-installer-ditches-the-ask-toolbar-swaps-in-yahoo-defaults.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2940688/java-installer-ditch... 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172856
- wpietri 6y ago
  As a Pushbullet user, I think the two cases are nothing alike. Pushbullet is doing things for me. The toolbar plague was about getting access to do things to you. Should Pushbullet be using the minimum set of permissions for that? Sure. Could there be better permission models, ones that make sure Pushbullet doesn't do anything naughty? Possibly! But neither of those justifies a blanket ban.
  - benatkin 6y ago
    I'd like to know what the number of users that directly used Pushbullet in the last day (or week, or month) over the number of users that have the Android app installed is. If they have it installed, everything they copy to the clipboard on Android is being sent to their servers, is it not? That puts them in the same category as Yahoo! Toolbar for me. At one time Yahoo! Toolbar was useful for a significant percentage of its users, because it would let them know how many email messages they have, as well as give them convenient access to the news and weather - so I disagree that it did nothing for its users. Edit: I took a look at https://blog.pushbullet.com/2014/08/20/introducing-universal-copy-and-paste/ https://blog.pushbullet.com/2014/08/20/introducing-universal... - it appears it was doing that at one time, but currently it may only be doing that for premium users, who would conceivably be likely enough to get good use the feature that it would justify the potential security risk.
duxup 6y ago
It was approved ... but did Google ever communicate exactly what the issue was with the permissions they used?
_fat_santa 6y ago
You know this wouldn't be so much of an issue if Chrome didn't disable the ability to install extensions outside of the web store. 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).
- servercobra 6y ago
  Is it closed to all types of new extensions? Or just certain kinds requiring certain permissions or in certain groups? I hadn't heard about this.
  - dmix 6y ago
    You can still install them on Chrome by downloading a directory and loading it via the extensions page (you have to keep the directory around though). Firefox allows you to install .xpi packages directly, just by opening the xpi and clicking "install", after enabling the option to do so in about:debugging (unless you use a development version of Firefox then it's automatically supported). No directory/zips extraction required.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  At least it’s possible to side load extensions in Chrome. I’ve been more disappointed in Firefox, which doesn’t allow this at all, even in the developer release. The only thing similar to side loading that is allowed is a temporary debug process, which loads an addon but only until the browser is restarted.
  - deleted 6y ago
afandian 6y ago
Pivotal phrase being: > things are back to normal now I bet this happens again.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I actually had a similar experience with Google Ads: A site was flagged for malware, no explanation what they had found, once I got answers out of them, days later, I found where a non-resolving but probably former malicious link ended up on the site. I purged it, cleared the CDN, asked for review, and was quickly rejected because I allegedly hadn't removed the malicious link. 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.
escape_goat 6y ago
I'm less qualified to opine on Google than most of the people here, but in hindsight, what Google products remind me of is the way that black walnut trees slowly poison the soil so that the seedlings from other species of tree cannot grow nearby. The good intentions that poured energy into all the 20% products are no longer the point. Somewhere along the way, someone figured out how to use them strategically. The free products are good, good enough to use, until you realize that there is no path for continued growth or investment of resources, and run into seemingly arbitrary disappointments and limitations; it as if at some point, someone stopped the projects from adding cool utility to the product, and started making sure that hindered, crippled versions of the feature were offered instead. I experience this most acutely with the languishing "Google My Maps" product. It feels as if the target is not just potential competition, but the imagination and demand of the market itself. 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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jboydyhacker 6y ago
The problems with the Chrome store are likely not over. What good is it if you have to stir up half the internet to get through their process? 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.
- ferzul 6y ago
  in the olden days we used linux and mozilla when if it wasn't windows or i.e. it was nothing. i filed taxes on paper. as the web goes closed and unfree, innovators have to open up new greenfields
coronadisaster 6y ago
Mozilla Sync along with Nextcloud and Riot.im provides most of the same functionalities (never tried Pushbullet though and wish them luck).
jakozaur 6y ago
The current internet giants got huge monopolistic like power that many dictators of many countries would envy. The set their rules, execute them, and judge them. 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.
- graham_paul 6y ago
  Imagine being banned by ALL of them. You are cut out from a large chunk of the Internet. the only thing saving you from being unable to access common internet services are those that dared to defy that monopoly (DDG, Mozilla and all those nameless folks working nights and weekends on projects you don't even know that exist until you become an internet pariah)
  - razster 6y ago
    Oh, my company has been there. Our DNS was blacklisted because someone spoofed our emails via GoDaddy. Well, Google blocked the DNS IP, and any emails we sent or tried to receive went into the ether. We also had #1 search results go missing because of it, a nightmare it was. I've since resolved the issue, lord did that take a chunck of our traffic away. Government bodies also could not access us, which hurt a lot!
graham_paul 6y ago
As a Firefox fan, I really hope it happens again and again. It's good for the web as a whole when Chrome fails and Firefox doesn't. 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.
- coolspot 6y ago
  1) Chromium is open-source as well. 2) Like 90% of Mozilla revenue comes from contract with Google. 3) Not sure what community-owned means here, but one could submit useful patch to both Chromium and Mozilla teams and have it accepted into main codebase. 4) Decisions for both products are not made by a community, but by internal full-time employees who are subordinates of CEO. Mozilla CEO knows the company absolutely can’t lose that contract with Google.
  - graham_paul 6y ago
    1. No, it is not. Chromium relies on binaries as well as calling Google's web services whose code you cannot read. That is why ungoogled-chromium is a thing 2. Not sure what your point is here. Mozilla needs to make money to maintain and improve its advocacy work 3. See point 1. You don't own or control Google's web services nor its domains therefore you have no full control of the build process if Google decides to shut down its services. If you want to see what community owned means, I suggest you look at the Python community. No hidden binaries or mysterious calls to corporate web services 4. Google's goal is to make money, Mozilla is to keep an open web. Obviously, Google has potential business conflicts while Mozilla doesn't, Mozilla wins even if it dies as long as the web is kept open, Google wins if it makes money full stop You simply cannot compare them. Just look at Chrome in a fully Google-owned environment (Android), it does not even have extensions.
    - ferzul 6y ago
      if mozilla dies, the open web is over. mozilla has been the champion of the open web through two browser monopolies and the five minutes in between. without them, all that is left is a the internet archive and wikipedia, neither of which can hold the web open.
7ewis 6y ago
On a positive note, I signed up to get a Chrome Developer account today - made a submission and it was approved within an hour. Read it could take a month plus be delayed due to COVID-19. I was pleasantly surprised.
fouric 6y ago
Who's keeping a list of all of the times that Google has shut down someone's Adwords/YouTube/Gmail/Play Store account / rejected their app / something else without any communication (this doesn't count as communication, as communication has to convey information) or apparent cause? Bonus points for finding the correlation between an article being linked to on Hacker News and the problem being resolved.
seanwilson 6y ago
Until Google gives us a roadmap with what they're going to change about the review process and when, I'm not hopeful right now. I don't understand why they need to be this opaque about it if they want a healthy developer ecosystem. 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 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/chromium-extensions/Hy1QgEJzWi0 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?
spaceribs 6y ago
As an aside to all this, seeing Google's team attempt to fight off Zoom's extension has been pretty hilarious to watch: https://imgur.com/a/4RwlI0S https://imgur.com/a/4RwlI0S 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.
juped 6y ago
Wow, they used the "complaining online and getting enough upvotes" support channel. It should not reflect well on companies when they fix things that come to their attention this way.
- jaggederest 6y ago
  I almost want to start a customer service pledge that says "We won't do anything special based on social media unless it retroactively takes into account other customers, and involves process changes that would resolve the problem in the future." Then at least they would be internally consistent about things like this. Too many Google products have "support by public outrage".
- Illniyar 6y ago
  That's really the only support channel google has. All the other channels are honeypots for people without connections or followings.
aasasd 6y ago
There's a great moderately-popular opensource extension providing a desktop-quality image viewer interface: zoom, rotate, stretch by default, all that jazz. Specifically, ‘there is’ this extension for Firefox. It was also there for Chrome, but the dev received the same crappy letter and didn't feel like playing the guessing game. New CRXes are still made available on the site. 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.
dilandau 6y ago
This is exactly what PushBullet was hoping would happen, so I don't know why they're surprised. Everyone loves a good "Google's algorithms are destroying my livelihood and I have no recourse" story... Why? Because it's fucking compelling and, to people outside of Google, it provokes a strong emotional reaction. 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.
ulises314 6y ago
Just a couple of loose thoughts on this: -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.
cryptonector 6y ago
Is there a list of all the permissions they stopped asking for?
lqet 6y ago
So, judging from the discussion on Twitter, there is basically a single guy at Google handling issues like that. > 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 https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261058935085101058 > I'm literally the only one for extensions. https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261155320740499456 https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261155320740499456
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  I had an epiphany 5-10 years ago about technological advancement. An article on here was posted that bart workers would be obsoleted. That it would save so much money. That bart could be more efficient. The solution was for users of bart to self service. Which got me thinking: so much of technological advancement isn't about reducing inefficiency, its about making other people bear the cost of that inefficiency. Someone that is proficient in navigating a subway map - someone that is doing it daily - can do so much quicker than people that are unfamiliar. Despite it potentially being more efficient to keep the person used to doing these things day in and day out employed, (some) technologists still insist on eliminating them because that's more efficient when looking at the smaller picture. This is basically what Google is doing here. They are making other people and organizations bear the burden of their inefficiencies.
  - jaggederest 6y ago
    It's troubling, I agree. I think more systems thinking helps to address this kind of mindset. Take into account not only the direct costs but the indirect costs, and much of the economic activity we take for granted evaporates. Just as an immediately obvious example, I think most of the direct profit from the petroleum industry is going to end up allocated towards climate change remediation, at least within an order of magnitude.
  - stormdennis 6y ago
    That's very true. I have an example to do with government. Previously client organisations would have submitted paper forms containing hundreds of fields and then at the government end these had to be manually read and entered into their software in a time consuming data entry process. At the client end, the tediousness of data entry had generally long been eliminated by their own software overprinting the forms, although periodically the government would issue new batches of forms which for no good reason altered the margins/fonts or whatever, necessitating software upgrades. Then government had the bright idea of moving the process online. The new "improved" setup involved the clients having to fill in an online web form rather than a paper one. This obviously solved the data entry problem at the government end by transferring it to the clients. No allowance was made for client software with any kind of api or anything like that, it all had to be done manually with usernames and passwords and confirmation of T&As boxes and screen after screen of boxes to fill in, manually. The automated logout ensured that login had to happen every single time a form was entered and for good measure a captcha was added to "add assurance that the forms were submitted by humans". Doubtless this was all viewed as a great success at the government in terms of increasing efficiency and offering an enhanced service to their clients
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
> Apologies to Pushbullet for the rejection after addressed the original violation 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.

328 points by imran3740 6y ago

They could also tell what was wrong to the customers. 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.

theandrewbailey 6y ago
A Google reviewer can select one of three canned responses to tell a developer what's wrong. https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-reply-in-gmail/ https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/save-time-with-smart-... Oh, you wanted an artisanal hand-crafted response unique to each individual situation? That's not scalable!
- userbinator 6y ago
  I abhor such... dehumanising (for lack of better term) "features" whose advertised benefit is saving time, but has a subtle effect of gradually delegating decisionmaking to someone or something else --- whose goals may not be in your best interests. Every time you "didn't have to think" is a time when someone else did the thinking for you. Take that too far and there is no you left in your life.
- antonvs 6y ago
  You linked to a blog about an optional feature of Gmail which all Gmail users see. What does that have to do with how reviewers can respond?

raybb 6y ago

Previous discussion where Pushbullet was worried about being killed off the chrome store: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Someone1234 6y ago

It is good that this was resolved, but not so good that they had to shame Google on HN/Twitter to get it looked at. 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.

oefrha 6y ago
> I understand that the Chrome extension store is free Pretty sure it’s not free, I had to pay a nominal $5 fee ages ago, and looks like that hasn’t changed. https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish#pay-the-developer-signup-fee https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/publish#pay-the-develo... Even found a recent news article reporting that now you need to pay the fee immediately on signup as opposed to when you publish the first extension/app. https://9to5google.com/2020/03/12/chrome-web-store-fee/ https://9to5google.com/2020/03/12/chrome-web-store-fee/ (In case anyone wonders why $5 is even worth mentioning — if you’re a teenager in a third world country you probably have neither the fund nor a credit card to publish a Chrome extension.)
- jiveturkey 6y ago
  If you don't have $5, how do you have the resources to develop an extension?
  - smilekzs 6y ago
    Having to pay US Dollars can still be a big hurdle
  - oefrha 6y ago
    No first hand experience, but I’ve heard stories of African kids doing impressive tech stuff using very limited resources. Presumably quite a few have access to school computers these days? Developing extensions is free as long as you have access to a computer. Anyway, not having access to a credit card (also need to be capable of international payment, which is not a given) is a much bigger issue than not having $5.

RHSeeger 6y ago

> All of that attention resulted in our issue being resolved. This is good for us. It is not yet clear if the attention will help other developers that are struggling with similar vague rejections. 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.

wpietri 6y ago
It seems like there are two ways to handle an exceptional condition. One is to say, "Gosh, this is bad! We'll fix it and move on!" And the other is to say, "This is bad, and it's telling us something about the system we've built. So let's fix it for this person, then find the systemic flaw and fix it so we stop doing this in the future." Sadly, a lot of companies will look at a PR problem and do just enough to make their pain go away, without ever saying, "Wait, are their people we should care about besides ourselves?" It's disappointing.
rapind 6y ago
The end result being a far less permissive extension. The permissions they required were insane but our entire focus is on Google's customer service. Now that we all agree that Google's process sucks, can we talk about how insane it is to even have this level or permissions available for request in the first place?
- csours 6y ago
  Google owns that side of it too. If Google thinks you are over-reaching in your access to permissions, they can simply choose not to provide access to the resources behind those permissions.
- oefrha 6y ago
  It’s not insane to have a *://*/* permission, since things like generic content blockers have to be able to modify any page (you definitely need to take great care when installing these extensions, which unfortunately most users aren’t equipped to assess, which is why extension security is such a headache and stringent review is welcome). On the other hand, this particular extension requesting this access just because they weren’t told not to is more of a wtf.

HackOfAllTrades 6y ago

So what was the actual change they were required to make?

sp332 6y ago
They made the two changes they said they would make in the previous blog post. https://twitter.com/pushbullet/status/1260692846111318028 https://twitter.com/pushbullet/status/1260692846111318028 So one or both of those.
wffurr 6y ago
According to Dotproto, the changes they made in their first re-submission were sufficient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  Makes you wonder - was there even a problem in the first place? Or were they just trying to silently kill this extension but failed due to this going viral? I understand they were using a very broad wildcard for permission on websites they could access. I'm glad they narrowed that down. But after they did, they still needed this to blow up in order to get an actual response.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Makes you wonder - was there even a problem in the first place? YES. > I understand they were using a very broad wildcard for permission on websites they could access That is a problem.
    - saurik 6y ago
      But we still don't know if that was the actual reason the app got pulled, as if that were the case it should have been trivial for a computer to notice it was fixed; do you not see how that sucks?

schoolornot 6y ago

Can someone from Google use a throwaway to explain why the hell their support is garbage. From the Chrome store, to G-Suite, to Pixel Support. It's just awful.

asdf21 6y ago
Always has been for 10+ years now. As a former Call Center Director, it's pretty amazing to me how much bad-will these massive companies are willing to foment by not running their support correctly. It's not that hard / expensive guys... you can hire great support employees for $20 / hour all across America.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Support is also one of the most remote friendly forms of work available, and often benefits from spreading workers over multiple time zones.
  - rapind 6y ago
    Much of customer support is like the close doors button on an elevator. It doesn't actually do anything, but makes you feel like it does.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It's much more expensive than not having it. Back of the napkin math for 1 billion users and a 1:100 support staff ratio comes out to around 5.8 billion dollars/yr.
  - asdf21 6y ago
    This is developer support, not user support.
- oefrha 6y ago
  Are these great $20/hr support engineers the kind I often deal with over email or phone, who usually employ canned responses, can’t solve off-script problems, tend to repeat the same unhelpful responses, and are sometimes indistinguishable from bots?

asdf21 6y ago

So... what was the issue?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wffurr 6y ago
According to Dotproto, the changes they made in their first re-submission were sufficient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874
Mindwipe 6y ago
It appears there wasn't one for the second rejection, the process is just completely broken.

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

I imagine the value that Google gets from chrome extensions is a small fraction of what they would get from Android apps. 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.

robotnikman 6y ago
Even Android App developers face the same thing. When they upload their app to the app store some bot looks at it, and can reject it for whatever reason and only provide a vague explanation. I've seen stories on /r/androiddev of developers apps getting rejected for uncertain reasons, or even having their whole account entirely banned. Unless you are a massive company like Netflix or Spotify you will have not way of contacting a human for support. I've thought of messing around with developing an Android app and uploading it to the app store just to gain some experience and try something different, but the fact that my whole google account could be banned just because a bot thought my app was bad for whatever reason is scary.
fouric 6y ago
I think that you're assuming that the number of apps that can be reviewed by a human remains constant over time. If Google hires programmers to do the review process, they can identify patterns, develop new techniques, and build tools to accelerate the process. Additionally, I bet that they're expecting the value of the Chrome store to increase over time, which compounds on the effect above.

aspenmayer 6y ago

What happened to the iOS app? I have it, but it isn't available in the US App Store anymore, nor is it linked to from the site's page anymore. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pushbullet/id810352052 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pushbullet/id810352052

TheArcane 6y ago
They unpublished it after refusing to allow a "Sign in with Apple" option on their login page. https://old.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/eirc1m/not_available_on_ios/fcxybyu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PushBullet/comments/eirc1m/not_avai... The dev said the iOS side of things are irrelevant for them anyway since most of their users are on Android, which is frankly disheartening since there's no alternative for iPhone users with linux desktops now
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Wow. That's pretty lame of them. I don't agree with their logic, but I do agree with following the user base. I will continue to use the version I have. I could probably find a way to share the .app if anyone needs it. Found pushover.net which seems like a decent (paid) alternative. We need an open-source version of this kind of functionality, maybe using ActivityPub? Self-hosted option with Google integration for a start, and since everyone needs to have Sign in with Apple for iOS, I guess that too. Might as well add Facebook login support.
  - ufmace 6y ago
    Not so sure about lame of PushBullet. It feels more lame of all of the major tech players to be essentially fighting over how much they can extort out of developers using their monopoly powers. Facebook seems to say, you have 1 week to update your sign-in integration code to the latest version (or I guess they get cut off from Facebook API or something?). Apple says you must support Apple sign-in, or you won't be allowed on our App Store, without with it's nearly impossible to get your app on an iPhone. Google says guess what we want based on our vague emails and meaningless responses, or we remove your extension/app from the store, making it nearly impossible to use on Chrome. Geez, it's like Microsoft is the good guy of the tech majors here.

benatkin 6y ago

I don't think this is proper use of Chrome extensions, and it hearkens back to the days of search toolbars, like the Ask and Yahoo toolbars being installed by Java. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2940688/java-installer-ditches-the-ask-toolbar-swaps-in-yahoo-defaults.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2940688/java-installer-ditch... 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172856

wpietri 6y ago
As a Pushbullet user, I think the two cases are nothing alike. Pushbullet is doing things for me. The toolbar plague was about getting access to do things to you. Should Pushbullet be using the minimum set of permissions for that? Sure. Could there be better permission models, ones that make sure Pushbullet doesn't do anything naughty? Possibly! But neither of those justifies a blanket ban.
- benatkin 6y ago
  I'd like to know what the number of users that directly used Pushbullet in the last day (or week, or month) over the number of users that have the Android app installed is. If they have it installed, everything they copy to the clipboard on Android is being sent to their servers, is it not? That puts them in the same category as Yahoo! Toolbar for me. At one time Yahoo! Toolbar was useful for a significant percentage of its users, because it would let them know how many email messages they have, as well as give them convenient access to the news and weather - so I disagree that it did nothing for its users. Edit: I took a look at https://blog.pushbullet.com/2014/08/20/introducing-universal-copy-and-paste/ https://blog.pushbullet.com/2014/08/20/introducing-universal... - it appears it was doing that at one time, but currently it may only be doing that for premium users, who would conceivably be likely enough to get good use the feature that it would justify the potential security risk.

duxup 6y ago

It was approved ... but did Google ever communicate exactly what the issue was with the permissions they used?

_fat_santa 6y ago

You know this wouldn't be so much of an issue if Chrome didn't disable the ability to install extensions outside of the web store. 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).

servercobra 6y ago
Is it closed to all types of new extensions? Or just certain kinds requiring certain permissions or in certain groups? I hadn't heard about this.
- dmix 6y ago
  You can still install them on Chrome by downloading a directory and loading it via the extensions page (you have to keep the directory around though). Firefox allows you to install .xpi packages directly, just by opening the xpi and clicking "install", after enabling the option to do so in about:debugging (unless you use a development version of Firefox then it's automatically supported). No directory/zips extraction required.
gnicholas 6y ago
At least it’s possible to side load extensions in Chrome. I’ve been more disappointed in Firefox, which doesn’t allow this at all, even in the developer release. The only thing similar to side loading that is allowed is a temporary debug process, which loads an addon but only until the browser is restarted.
- deleted 6y ago

afandian 6y ago

Pivotal phrase being: > things are back to normal now I bet this happens again.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I actually had a similar experience with Google Ads: A site was flagged for malware, no explanation what they had found, once I got answers out of them, days later, I found where a non-resolving but probably former malicious link ended up on the site. I purged it, cleared the CDN, asked for review, and was quickly rejected because I allegedly hadn't removed the malicious link. 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.

escape_goat 6y ago

I'm less qualified to opine on Google than most of the people here, but in hindsight, what Google products remind me of is the way that black walnut trees slowly poison the soil so that the seedlings from other species of tree cannot grow nearby. The good intentions that poured energy into all the 20% products are no longer the point. Somewhere along the way, someone figured out how to use them strategically. The free products are good, good enough to use, until you realize that there is no path for continued growth or investment of resources, and run into seemingly arbitrary disappointments and limitations; it as if at some point, someone stopped the projects from adding cool utility to the product, and started making sure that hindered, crippled versions of the feature were offered instead. I experience this most acutely with the languishing "Google My Maps" product. It feels as if the target is not just potential competition, but the imagination and demand of the market itself. 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.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jboydyhacker 6y ago

The problems with the Chrome store are likely not over. What good is it if you have to stir up half the internet to get through their process? 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.

ferzul 6y ago
in the olden days we used linux and mozilla when if it wasn't windows or i.e. it was nothing. i filed taxes on paper. as the web goes closed and unfree, innovators have to open up new greenfields

coronadisaster 6y ago

Mozilla Sync along with Nextcloud and Riot.im provides most of the same functionalities (never tried Pushbullet though and wish them luck).

jakozaur 6y ago

The current internet giants got huge monopolistic like power that many dictators of many countries would envy. The set their rules, execute them, and judge them. 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.

graham_paul 6y ago
Imagine being banned by ALL of them. You are cut out from a large chunk of the Internet. the only thing saving you from being unable to access common internet services are those that dared to defy that monopoly (DDG, Mozilla and all those nameless folks working nights and weekends on projects you don't even know that exist until you become an internet pariah)
- razster 6y ago
  Oh, my company has been there. Our DNS was blacklisted because someone spoofed our emails via GoDaddy. Well, Google blocked the DNS IP, and any emails we sent or tried to receive went into the ether. We also had #1 search results go missing because of it, a nightmare it was. I've since resolved the issue, lord did that take a chunck of our traffic away. Government bodies also could not access us, which hurt a lot!

graham_paul 6y ago

As a Firefox fan, I really hope it happens again and again. It's good for the web as a whole when Chrome fails and Firefox doesn't. 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.

coolspot 6y ago
1) Chromium is open-source as well. 2) Like 90% of Mozilla revenue comes from contract with Google. 3) Not sure what community-owned means here, but one could submit useful patch to both Chromium and Mozilla teams and have it accepted into main codebase. 4) Decisions for both products are not made by a community, but by internal full-time employees who are subordinates of CEO. Mozilla CEO knows the company absolutely can’t lose that contract with Google.
- graham_paul 6y ago
  1. No, it is not. Chromium relies on binaries as well as calling Google's web services whose code you cannot read. That is why ungoogled-chromium is a thing 2. Not sure what your point is here. Mozilla needs to make money to maintain and improve its advocacy work 3. See point 1. You don't own or control Google's web services nor its domains therefore you have no full control of the build process if Google decides to shut down its services. If you want to see what community owned means, I suggest you look at the Python community. No hidden binaries or mysterious calls to corporate web services 4. Google's goal is to make money, Mozilla is to keep an open web. Obviously, Google has potential business conflicts while Mozilla doesn't, Mozilla wins even if it dies as long as the web is kept open, Google wins if it makes money full stop You simply cannot compare them. Just look at Chrome in a fully Google-owned environment (Android), it does not even have extensions.
  - ferzul 6y ago
    if mozilla dies, the open web is over. mozilla has been the champion of the open web through two browser monopolies and the five minutes in between. without them, all that is left is a the internet archive and wikipedia, neither of which can hold the web open.

7ewis 6y ago

On a positive note, I signed up to get a Chrome Developer account today - made a submission and it was approved within an hour. Read it could take a month plus be delayed due to COVID-19. I was pleasantly surprised.

fouric 6y ago

Who's keeping a list of all of the times that Google has shut down someone's Adwords/YouTube/Gmail/Play Store account / rejected their app / something else without any communication (this doesn't count as communication, as communication has to convey information) or apparent cause? Bonus points for finding the correlation between an article being linked to on Hacker News and the problem being resolved.

seanwilson 6y ago

Until Google gives us a roadmap with what they're going to change about the review process and when, I'm not hopeful right now. I don't understand why they need to be this opaque about it if they want a healthy developer ecosystem. 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 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/chromium-extensions/Hy1QgEJzWi0 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?

spaceribs 6y ago

As an aside to all this, seeing Google's team attempt to fight off Zoom's extension has been pretty hilarious to watch: https://imgur.com/a/4RwlI0S https://imgur.com/a/4RwlI0S 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.

juped 6y ago

Wow, they used the "complaining online and getting enough upvotes" support channel. It should not reflect well on companies when they fix things that come to their attention this way.

jaggederest 6y ago
I almost want to start a customer service pledge that says "We won't do anything special based on social media unless it retroactively takes into account other customers, and involves process changes that would resolve the problem in the future." Then at least they would be internally consistent about things like this. Too many Google products have "support by public outrage".
Illniyar 6y ago
That's really the only support channel google has. All the other channels are honeypots for people without connections or followings.

aasasd 6y ago

There's a great moderately-popular opensource extension providing a desktop-quality image viewer interface: zoom, rotate, stretch by default, all that jazz. Specifically, ‘there is’ this extension for Firefox. It was also there for Chrome, but the dev received the same crappy letter and didn't feel like playing the guessing game. New CRXes are still made available on the site. 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.

dilandau 6y ago

This is exactly what PushBullet was hoping would happen, so I don't know why they're surprised. Everyone loves a good "Google's algorithms are destroying my livelihood and I have no recourse" story... Why? Because it's fucking compelling and, to people outside of Google, it provokes a strong emotional reaction. 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.

ulises314 6y ago

Just a couple of loose thoughts on this: -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.

cryptonector 6y ago

Is there a list of all the permissions they stopped asking for?

lqet 6y ago

So, judging from the discussion on Twitter, there is basically a single guy at Google handling issues like that. > 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 https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261058935085101058 > I'm literally the only one for extensions. https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261155320740499456 https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1261155320740499456

bcrosby95 6y ago
I had an epiphany 5-10 years ago about technological advancement. An article on here was posted that bart workers would be obsoleted. That it would save so much money. That bart could be more efficient. The solution was for users of bart to self service. Which got me thinking: so much of technological advancement isn't about reducing inefficiency, its about making other people bear the cost of that inefficiency. Someone that is proficient in navigating a subway map - someone that is doing it daily - can do so much quicker than people that are unfamiliar. Despite it potentially being more efficient to keep the person used to doing these things day in and day out employed, (some) technologists still insist on eliminating them because that's more efficient when looking at the smaller picture. This is basically what Google is doing here. They are making other people and organizations bear the burden of their inefficiencies.
- jaggederest 6y ago
  It's troubling, I agree. I think more systems thinking helps to address this kind of mindset. Take into account not only the direct costs but the indirect costs, and much of the economic activity we take for granted evaporates. Just as an immediately obvious example, I think most of the direct profit from the petroleum industry is going to end up allocated towards climate change remediation, at least within an order of magnitude.
- stormdennis 6y ago
  That's very true. I have an example to do with government. Previously client organisations would have submitted paper forms containing hundreds of fields and then at the government end these had to be manually read and entered into their software in a time consuming data entry process. At the client end, the tediousness of data entry had generally long been eliminated by their own software overprinting the forms, although periodically the government would issue new batches of forms which for no good reason altered the margins/fonts or whatever, necessitating software upgrades. Then government had the bright idea of moving the process online. The new "improved" setup involved the clients having to fill in an online web form rather than a paper one. This obviously solved the data entry problem at the government end by transferring it to the clients. No allowance was made for client software with any kind of api or anything like that, it all had to be done manually with usernames and passwords and confirmation of T&As boxes and screen after screen of boxes to fill in, manually. The automated logout ensured that login had to happen every single time a form was entered and for good measure a captcha was added to "add assurance that the forms were submitted by humans". Doubtless this was all viewed as a great success at the government in terms of increasing efficiency and offering an enhanced service to their clients

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

> Apologies to Pushbullet for the rejection after addressed the original violation 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.