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

• scottporad 6y ago
  I’m sorry that you had that experience. Maybe enough up votes will get Google’s attention.
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    There’s only one developer advocate on the Chrome extension team; hopefully they see this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198629
    • bjornstar 6y ago
      Instead of coming on here and addressing the issue, he tweeted this instead: Thanks for the tag. Looks like the author's core issue is (understandably) with the construction of the system itself. I'm not sure what I can do here other than listen and reiterate that we are trying to work to address these issues. - https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1264331488029376513 https://twitter.com/DotProto/status/1264331488029376513 A month ago he said: For context, we're currently planning to create a team that will respond to escalations with more meaningful information about a rejection. - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-extensions/o3I5pFH5z_g/FnvY0pI3AwAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-exte... But the situation only appears to be getting worse and no one at Google appears to care enough to do anything about it. I have an extension that is once again in rejection form mail purgatory and it makes me want to take my extensions off of the Google Chrome Web Store as well.
  • metalliqaz 6y ago
    google dgaf There are only a handful of extensions that are deal breakers (the lack of which would send users to other browsers). uBlock Origin, for example. All the others can fuck right off.
    • jtbayly 6y ago
      lol. If you think uBlock Origin going away will make people switch browsers, I think you've got another think coming. We will soon see... 1. When (not "if") Google kills UBO 2. How Chrome's market share doesn't drop
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
        Google have already given notice that they are killing uBlock Origin. Manifest v3 will eliminate the ability to have your own adblocker. In its place will be the ability for an extensions to provide an interface to a built in functionality that is deliberately gimped. Adblock addons will be drastically limited in functionality, must bundle the block list with the addon, can't update the list outside of updating the addon, are limited to a fraction of the size of existing block lists. This will end the arms race in favor of ads vs blockers by ensuring that ad blockers can't win while pretending its not ending adblocking.
        • metalliqaz 6y ago
          As a Firefox user I can only laugh at this.
  • shklnrj 6y ago
    I finally stopped using chrome and thanks to Brave, I can use almost all the extensions that I still am used to, since all of them are compatible with Brave.
    • bdcravens 6y ago
      Brave is based on Chromium
      • luckylion 6y ago
        But it's not chrome, hence not controlled by Google, and not bound by their policies regarding what extensions you may or may not install.
        • SanchoPanda 6y ago
          I think the parents comment's argument is that since it's based on chromium it also can eventually be forced to acquiesce, so any chromium-based browser is just a stop gap solution.
          • ensignavenger 6y ago
            Chromium is Open Source, Google can t force Brave or MS or anyone else to do anything they don't want to. Google can make their life difficult, leading to a fork, but they can't force anything beyond that. With all that said- I still prefer Firefox and think it is the best choice right now for the Web.
            • SanchoPanda 6y ago
              The difference in scale of effort and money/time of being downstream vs a fork makes it at least possible that they would do no such thing. I personally think it would be extremely unlikely they would fork it.
        • xkapastel 6y ago
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    Maybe with enough exposure it will get people to move away from digital sharecropping where anyone even can accidentally take away your livelihood.
• tdeck 6y ago
  > Google (Robot): We'll take your extension down Me: Hey, this must be a mistake > Google (Robot): No mistake, review these policies, your extension violates one of them Me: It does not violate any of them, this is a mistake! > Google (Finally human): Oh, sorry, a mistake. Obviously someone just needs to create a robot that automatically replies to the takedown notices and disputes them, thus closing the loop!
  • black_puppydog 6y ago
    I had the same reaction. But then the individual programmer/founder won't risk their robot messing this up, while for google it's a numbers game. Also, someone would have to program that bot and can you even imagine how dead inside you'd feel if that was your life?
    • thanksforfish 6y ago
      Using AI to suggest a reply or to use human approval seems like a low risk approach. Would you feel dead inside if your tool helped developers keep their projects online? Sounds rewarding to fight the big guy and keep cool projects online.
      • black_puppydog 6y ago
        I am opposed to any job that I feel shouldn't (need to) exist
  • dade_ 6y ago
    Somehow I expect that using a bot against their bot violates user TOS part #63836370 section YQ, and they will immediately lock your accounts, associated business accounts, delete the data and offer zero recourse.
    • erichocean 6y ago
      And laugh about it, because they think it's funny.
• omnifischer 6y ago
  It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch questions like: 1. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2. No repeal process At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and understand mentality of other people. It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us? What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates account without human intervention? Please do not blame it on Project Managers. You are human - so is some one that was affected by your code. Amen
  • luckylion 6y ago
    > What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates account without human intervention? Please do not blame it on Project Managers. One who gets paid half a million a year to not question the policies and their consequences and just does what they are told?
    • lowiqengineer 6y ago
      It’s pretty apparent that they think people who don’t work for google are vastly inferior human beings. It honestly runs counter to their “social justice” facade.
      • monadic2 6y ago
        I really think this is unreasonable. Even at google there are different subcultures, including many with an anti-corporate streak. Furthermore I’m not going to blame an employee for not sticking out their neck for client businesses who also don’t give a shit about them. This isn’t a problem of individual providence. Google needs a damn union just to get some reason in the building.
        • microcolonel 6y ago
          > Google needs a damn union just to get some reason in the building. The problem is not mainly with how Google treats their employees (though there's definitely something wrong there), but with how they treat their customers.
• hkyeti 6y ago
  As someone who's Google ad account was mysteriously suspended for no given reason (even before a single ad was run) and am now up to 4 days waiting with no reply nor phone number I can call, I hear you..
• Kaze404 6y ago
  I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever fixing it. That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me how little Google cares about anyone (users or the people who make content for their platforms) yet we still use their products. These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually. What can we do about this?
  • lykr0n 6y ago
    Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews.
    • llampx 6y ago
      According to a lot of devs and CTOs I've met, Google and Apple can't do anything wrong while Microsoft can't do anything right.
      • bsder 6y ago
        Actually, I regularly have to go through any APIs we use from Google and yell at the developers who use them. I can't risk having a corporate rollout/demo/pilot fail because some developer made the Googlebot pissy and got everything they're associated with banned. I trust Microsoft way more than Google at this point. That says something.
      • sakoht 6y ago
        Google is clearly guilty of neglect because they like to do everything in an automated way ...even if it can’t possibly be done well at this point. But that is way different than Embrace, Extend, Extinguish from MS. I would not trade, say, Chrome for the world of IE. the tension between Google and Apple is far healthier for developers and consumers.
• dorkinspace 6y ago
  It seems like trying to build a business on any Google property is simply a bad idea. Or, if you do, have an alternative ready for when Google shuts down the product or cancels your account.
  • speeder 6y ago
    My "RL" business, that has nothing to do with tech, relies heavily on Google ads, whenever we lessen the spending on them, our income drop proportionally, I am very worried about what will happen when they yank our account due to a mistake, but I am yet to figure out an alternative, other ad providers made no difference...
    • nihil75 6y ago
      I made such a mistake - hosted a static page on AWS S3 with a redirect. Google didn't like that. AdWords account blocked, no one to talk to but the bots!
• aboringusername 6y ago
  One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of automated decision making going on. In [1], the ICO offers guidance around what the GDPR says in regards to this subject. What I don't understand is why the GDPR doesn't enforce the following: 1: Clear and concise information about the action being taken, and clear identification this was done using automation and did not involve any human oversight. 2: A process the user can invoke to request human intervention, and a confirmation email that a human will review the decision that was made within 30 days 3: Public statistics and transparency - any decision that was made that did not involve a human must be published, with stats on % of decisions made, number of cases flagged to human reviewers, and the success/failure rates (for example, number of cases resulting in an overturned AI decision by a human). This could also be beneficial in other sectors too, like automated credit decisions and insurance policies, to publish statistics and data to afford transparency and identify possible biases. It should also be a requirement in law to preserve any code or algorithms should they need to be audited, including an AI system to be preserved "in time", so that the 2017 version can be audited in 2020 if an investigation is launched for example. Right now, it's a complete free for all, too many edge cases and ways to game the system if you can figure its loopholes, and no requirement in law to provide a fair basis for users to appeal to a human without causing a PR shitstorm. This early adoption of AI is quite bad, and I suspect we'll see such developments in the long term future as it matures. [1]: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/automated-decision-making-and-profiling/what-does-the-gdpr-say-about-automated-decision-making-and-profiling/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
  • 5h 6y ago
    Literally the first sentence of the GDPR: This Regulation lays down rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data. No snark, this situation sucks, but after dealing with GDPR for a while it's not well understood in tech societies
    • aboringusername 6y ago
      I think what's needed is case studies or case law. A ruling in a court that becomes a "model" as to which the GDPR is applied. People look at historic court cases which defines future societal behavior (like acceptance of Gay marriage in some places). It'll take time but get there eventually, and then we'll see changes based on that.
• annadane 6y ago
  Hi there Google employees that occasionally come here to comment! THIS IS WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES. This among MANY other reasons is why people are pissed off with you. When are you going to fix your toxic corporate culture?
• monadic2 6y ago
  I imagine it must be painful to tie your agency to a large corporate entity that clearly doesn’t give a shit about you.
  • m-p-3 6y ago
    All hail our indifferent corporate overlords.
• leonardteo 6y ago
  I feel you... We had similar issues with the Google Play store for the ArtStation App (https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation-android-app/ https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-artstation-...), it simply got taken down and appealing continually got rejected. It was only after the issue got picked up as the top story on Hacker News and other sites that exposed the dysfunctional nature of their moderation that finally Google subtly changed their policy so that if the content is primarily “artistic” it’s allowed, but the catch is that only they deem what is appropriate and not... We recently updated our Chrome extension also and it just seems to me that not a whole lot of effort is going into the Chrome Web Store, at least on the developer side where you update the extensions.
  • lol636363 6y ago
    As a web developer, i am tired of JavaScript and whole web ecosystem and want try desktop or mobile apps. But then I read stuff like this and just cannot imagine building a business where AI or one single outsourced moderator can upend my business. I hate regulations but I am of opnion that if you are a platform that other people use to make living then you should be regulated. Don't be platform of you cannot provide processes to handle appeals or able to pay massive damages in case of false positives. For now, I will stick with webdev.
  • Nightshaxx 6y ago
    That's kinda NSFW.....might be helpful next time if you indicated it as such.
    • errantspark 6y ago
      Really?? Feels like I'm living in 17th century New England here.
      • pricechild 6y ago
        I can confirm it's NSF(my)W in 21st century Old England.
      • 6y ago
• deadwing0 6y ago
  Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the moderation (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the Chrome Store because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds of people to do it manually? I know it's easy to say "Google doesn't care about you," and generally it as a company may not care, but they also are not in the business of putting us out of business. It feels like to me that they have just become a sprawling mass of interconnected yet disjointed divisions but without any real customer service department that can handle the amount of requests or situations like in OP. I am not on their side in any way, but Occam's razor and all, it just seems the most likely explanation to me is that they are just too cheap to pay people to handle the volume of customer issues they have? Or would it not be economically feasible? What do y'all think? [Edited to divide into two paragraphs for slightly easier reading]
  • Majromax 6y ago
    > Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the moderation (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the Chrome Store because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds of people to do it manually? Undoubtedly, for the Chrome Store as well as all of their other properties. Ultimately, Google's business model is about earning fractions of a cent per view/download and making it up in volume. Their profit margin depends on relentless cost optimization, and humans are inevitably the most expensive part of their support/maintenance systems. Google undoubtedly doesn't want to put extension writers out of business, but if they adjust their procedures to give cases like this real human attention then they will undoubtedly allow a few dozen spammers/scammers to also receive human attention. (Note: I present the above without judgement. If I were to add my judgement, I'd say that I don't think that this state of affairs is a good thing, and in the long run we may need to reconsider whether algorithmic promotion of content without human oversight is viable.)
    • detaro 6y ago
      I'm still a bit surprised they're not offering a paid support tier. That'd still suck for non-commercial extensions, but at least help with the "extension filtering is killing our business!" cases.
• nyreed 6y ago
  Do you remember when browser extensions could be installed from a developer's own website and didn't require any kind of dysfunctional 'gatekeeping'? I know there are benefits to having someone vet browser extensions, but it seems a shame that they remove the self-distribution option completely when their moderation is so ineffectual.
  • vezycash 6y ago
    There's this quote about how the dictator are benevolent in the beginning in their appeals to people's safety needs. Slowly but surely, the people handover their rights and are shocked by the power the dictator "suddenly has." When the chrome team was tightening their grips on chrome, people here hailed the move because some windows programs like anti-viruses, download managers and adware sideloaded extensions.
    • dictationer 6y ago
      I like this. We do keep giving power to some system because they "protect us" (Google and Apple in 2010) but there's always a chance that they'll stop caring once they don't need your support anymore. Microsoft is also trying to buy our support by being benevolent, I wonder how long and if that will last.
      • WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
        Until the nanosecond they regain enough ground they’d lost when they missed both mobile and cloud.
  • crummy 6y ago
    Not saying it wasn't a better time, but I do remember the era of half a dozen IE toolbars installed on folks' computers doing God knows what.
    • lonelappde 6y ago
      Wouldn't a better solution be a pop-up that says "your browser has bad plug-ins. May I uninstall them for you?"
• WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  Keeps me wondering, can we still install extensions outside their store? Or did they plug the last escape hatch and fucked it all up?
  • weaksauce 6y ago
    I would be extremely surprised if they remove that feature all together because extension development would not work at all.
  • Guzba 6y ago
    Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.
    • sb8244 6y ago
      Can you go more into what they do if you try to bypass their distribution mechanism? Is there any existing posts sharing experience? I'm curious as this has always been my backup plan if Google takes this action against my extensions.
      • yunyu 6y ago
        It's fine on MacOS (albeit a bit clunky), and sideloaded upgrades end up creating two copies of the extension so you'll have to ship your own autoupdater. On Windows, it's a no-go as Chrome will display a scary warning every time you start the browser: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-developer-mode-extensions-pop-up-in-chrome https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-develop...
        • sb8244 6y ago
          Yikes. I use macos but definitely ship up windows. Appreciate you sharing this.
• vezycash 6y ago
  Developers evangelized Android and Chrome in their early days - created the monsters. People making Chrome only sites are feeding the monster. Instead of Kozmos shutting down, the best revenge would making a firefox extension and getting their users to switch.
  • pedrocx486 6y ago
    Or even Edge. Their new Chromium based builds are Chrome compatible and have their own store.
    • sb8244 6y ago
      The great thing here is that it is literally 100% compatible with Chrome extensions. I have been working on an extension that uses Chrome's Debugger API, lots of tab / network related APIs, and DevTools. I spun it up on Edge the other day and...it just worked. Everything worked. I can't say the same for firefox. They do a good job bringing over some extension APIs, but I find it severely lacking for my use case.
  • StavrosK 6y ago
    Agreed, why are they shutting down instead of doing that?
    • arkh 6y ago
      Not sure there's a lot of Firefox users paying for extensions. especially one which seem to just be a sexier bookmark search.
    • livueta 6y ago
      I generally try to avoid bitching about Firefox design decisions in Chrome threads, but possibly because of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409675 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409675 - the original WebExtensions breaking change removed the ability for newtab-style extensions to do a lot of things their XPI counterparts could, in particular focusing on the address bar after opening a new tab. That bug went WONTFIX with no suggestions for an alternative interface, basically telling extension devs to come up with their own proposal for how to implement it if they want that bit of the API back. I'm not familiar enough with the extension in question to say whether any of those specific issues would have affected it (and from the article it sounds like time was a bigger pressure) but developing newtab-style extensions for Firefox is definitely harder than it should be. While I generally agree with the reasons behind moving away from XPI extensions, it's been really disappointing to see Firefox not be as focused as I'd hoped they'd be on restoring lost extension functionality. That's especially important in the context of Google fuckery like the OP.
• calpaterson 6y ago
  I have a side-project that is partially a browser extension. I use a single codebase for both Firefox and Chrome. Even with my trivial side-project and a grand total of two releases so far, Google ar itrarily rejected one release for being "spammy" when there was literally a 5 line diff between it and the previous release. Thankfully just finding the depreciated dashboard and uploading an icon (the "new dashboard" doesn't have this feature yet apparently) got it through after resubmitting it. It feels like they've set themselves as gatekeepers of Chrome extensions (Windows users can only install from the "store") but they aren't actually interested in doing the job even though you pay an admin fee for the privilege of developing a free extension for their browser.
  • kyleee 6y ago
    Your best course of action is to drop chrome support, and make your extension as good as possible and make a point of marketing that it's firefox only. Most won't do it due to worrying about market share, but alas IMO it's the best option available
    • calpaterson 6y ago
      I use Firefox personally and originally made the thing for myself. I added Chrome support because Chrome is much more popular (not far from ten times more popular these days :() and people I would like to use this, eg friends and family, mostly use Chrome. I couldn't ask them to switch browsers for my little side project. I have to co-operate with Google's bureaucracy. For what it's worth, so far it seems like Mozilla is not exactly streets ahead, but at least they didn't charge me and they seem to be fairer and more helpful to extension developers (they have a "self-distribution" mode with relaxed oversight I used while in private alpha, and their tools and docs are better).
      • IggleSniggle 6y ago
        I think it would be perfectly reasonable to promote Firefox to your friends and family as "simply the better choice" irrespective of your own interests. When Chrome was better, I suggested friends and family use Chrome. Now I think most people would benefit from using Firefox as their primary driver.
• bdcravens 6y ago
  > Imagine having the same conversation, and starting it over and over from scratch every a few weeks Seems like after doing this 2 or 3 times, I'd be making plans for a pivot or change to my business model.
• Awelton 6y ago
  Maybe someday everyone will realize that google isn't a company that provides services to users, it's a data theft company. They don't really care about bugs or frustrations because they aren't in the business of providing things to you. You are not their customer. The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. They are an advertising company. They use their products to steal your information. They aren't meant to help the user, because the user is not their customer. I'm sure you will get a real human employee if you are interested in buying ads from them. Contrary to popular belief there are many companies that provide software besides google. Use them if you want a provider that might care about your problems. "It's not exactly the same as google ____" is not a valid excuse for not giving it an honest try.
  • vosper 6y ago
    > they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider. But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers. Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of support?
    • begemotz 6y ago
      are you suggesting that if you paid, then they would not trade in your data?
      • joshuamorton 6y ago
        I'd go further and suggest that some of those services don't trade in your data even at the free tier.
        • dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
          I guess you might be right. For example, here is a semi-official answer on how Google makes money out of Google Docs: https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-Docs-and-Drive-generate-any-revenue-for-Google https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-Docs-and-Drive-generate-an... It's not unlikely that in this case they use the more traditional business model of having the free tier do the marketing for the premium option.
• carapace 6y ago
  I'm keeping an eye on cookiengineer's "Stealth" proxy ( https://github.com/cookiengineer/stealth https://github.com/cookiengineer/stealth ). It reminds me of the old (and still kickin') Proxomitron ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron ) If you MITM your own browser you can do whatever you want without an extension (that's almost a hostage to browser makers.)
• js4ever 6y ago
  This story explain perfectly why I will never create anything relying on Google tech or services again... Too many horrors story... And I have 2 projects killed by their dumb AI and without any possibility to talk to a human Google is Skynet!
• Guzba 6y ago
  There are people inside Google that must have thought this review and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have gotten built otherwise. Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response inside Google? I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world consequences of choices like this into who is empowered to make choices going forward.
  • downerending 6y ago
    One thing I've noticed working for a variety of companies is that highly profitable companies generally do not have consequences for even fairly dramatic failures, both in terms of how they treat customers and how they treat employees. They simply have too much money, so there's little need to do so. In a tiny company, a large failure can easily be the end of the company, so they're far more motivated to care about things like customer happiness, etc.
    • sneak 6y ago
      Relevant: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/gap/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/gap/ This story is about infra, but it applies just as much for product.
      • downerending 6y ago
        Interesting read. I've never worked for a company that tried to do a reasonably serious post mortem on a disaster. Or perhaps I was simply never one of the cool kids that were invited. It's pleasant to think that that's actually happening somewhere. Usually it's probably more like Google+ (gosh, we did everything right, but somehow it just didn't work out--oh well, it wasn't that much money after all, and hey, we can keep using it internally).
    • IronWolve 6y ago
      VP of ATT Wireless Billing fired the number portability group and hired an outside firm to do it, right before the date the FCC mandated people be allowed to switch carriers and keep their cell number. Took a few months to fix the issue, and ATTWS was fined millions per day. The VP made a boatload in a bonus for outsourcing a major group with expensive Seattle engineers and offshoring it. Then the company paid millions to the FCC in fines for the fuck up. He kept his job. Saw this cycle repeated all over, VP replacing expensive hundreds of millions in telecom equipment then go working for that vendor as a VP for them cough nortel cough... Shit kept moving along, saw VP's back in the day push for the expensive per minute charges on low income phones while allowing the cheapest rates or inclusive long distance for normal users. The costs to keep the extra expensive billing and bad press of gouging the poor was ignored util it made the news. Shrug, change policy, nothing to see here. Google is losing Joe Rogan due to censorship, while Google is running off their most watched creators due to guest censorship. Theres even people making plugins to get around googles censorship (msm channel blacklist, pockettube, etc). The whole control angle of companies strangles customers and developers to create new platforms, bad mangament is a great opportunity for startups to take on these issues and grow into major companies. Spotify is just the modern day Napster. Bitchute is a wayward home for censored conversations. Paypal decided to ban people for politics and now dozens of companies are biting into their market, Square/Stripe etc. People are tired of being controlled by FANNG companies, nextdoor took off due to facebook, companies are trying to keep the afloat with the largest consumer base, but once the market is shattered with fleeing/banned users and customers, new companies will pop up. Myspace tried to control the market, facebook took over, now facebook controls what you see in your feed, and people flee, so facebook buys up the startups people flee too. Tiny companies fill the need, we just need to make sure they get funded to continue and grow, crowd sourcing is one area that helps. I'm loving that hackers and programmers who hate being told what to do and how to act, are coding and design ways around this problem. Chrome extensions is a good idea, but soon google will ban them, Dissenter as an example. When chrome is too controlling people flee to the next browser. Look at how many browsers there are now doing what Google is lacking. I cant wait to see what people build to rebel against "the system", and theres now methods to fund them, the future looks great. Everyone keeps talking about the same issues, as if its an accepted fact, then someone comes along and builds a platform/app/extension that fixes it. And people move on...
• wolfgke 6y ago
  Next time on HN: Postmortem and lesson learned: Don't make yourself dependent on BIG_COMPANY when building a product
  • Guzba 6y ago
    This comment is trite. No Android app, no iPhone app, no Google search listing, no Amazon product page, no Stream/Epic store listing, no browser extensions, no cloud servers. Can you rely on an internet provider or should you lay your own fiber? What technology product are you going to make that relies on nothing? HN deserves better comments imo.
    • matz1 6y ago
      Do not relay on one solution, diversify. Have a backup plan. Assume that whatever it is you rely on has possibility to dissappear anytime for any reason.
    • wolfgke 6y ago
      Every stock market investor knows that you should always diversify your risk. So never make yourself deoendent on the whims of some single or few BIG_COMPANIES. Specifically: > no Stream/Epic store listing There exist lots of stores: Epic, Steam, GOG, Humble Store, itch, ... So diversify the risks of being dependent on the whims of one or few of them. > no cloud servers Write your server-side applications in a way that does not depend too much on the specific details of the cloud implementation of a specific cloud provider so that you can rather easily switch to another cloud provider if necessary.
• iforgotpassword 6y ago
  I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-programmers who think they can solve anything with machine learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly flagged and when a human finally reviewed it we found it was a mistake each time, so maybe set a flag on this extension to double-check next time". Or maybe, have such incidents automatically bubble up to the team responsible for the automatic screening. But why do that if you're a wunderkind programmer who never makes mistakes? Sorry, this is the only explanation I have for this, I've worked with this kind of person twice. Once they got the first version of something running they are done, no further testing, no sanity checks, no asserts or logger.warn() for "this can never happen" branches.
  • georgeecollins 6y ago
    The other explanation is that they don't really want users to have most browser extensions. The browser extensions either become features that google wants to embed in the browser, or things they don't want, for business reasons. In either case it is better if the extension dies after a year or so. BTW, this doesn't have to be a conscious choice of anyone at Google, it could just be the way the incentives turn out.
    • singron 6y ago
      I think this is unfortunately close to the truth. I think Chrome only entertains extensions on desktop since desktop browsers are somewhat competitive. On Android where their bundling deals ensure Chrome is the default browser, they don't really have to bother. They can just disable extensions and therefore ad-blockers.
    • lonelappde 6y ago
      User friendly features are only incentivized in a competitive environment. Until Firefox or Edge catches up in both performance and implementation compatibility to make Chrome-first sites work, extension support isn't incentivized
• fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  The worst outcome of the iPhone is the general move of programmers from people who write software for a platform the user fully controls to people who write software for a platform controlled by a company that the user borrows a device from.
  • whathappenedto 6y ago
    Yeah, everyone's known that platform dependence is risky, and every decade or so we "learn our lesson" but then forget the moment the next cool platform comes along if it has enough users.
    • throwaway2048 6y ago
      its not so much forgotten as aggressively dismissed and mocked as tin foil hattery.
      • willis936 6y ago
        It’s almost like the companies with more money than governments and complete control over what content users see might shape the world to keep their profits high. One way to tell if a conspiracy is crazy is if it doesn’t benefit rich people. This pretty clearly passes that test.
        • throwaway2048 6y ago
          You don't have to believe conspiracy theories to think centralization is bad. Sometimes bullshit "they" don't want you to know about is still bullshit.
    • young_unixer 6y ago
      Developers go where the money goes. The money goes where the users go. The users don't know the difference between a walled garden and a free ecosystem.
• foobar_ 6y ago
  This seems like a cool service. There are few bookmark managers implementing full text search. Move to safari or firefox and notify the users ?
• dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  The worst part of the so called modern Google experience for me is that somehow mediocrity seems to be accepted as good enough. Quality human work has been replaced by software that is far from perfect. The worst part: others try to emulate that, "because Google is doing that." But Google is a Behemoth that can afford not caring. Moreover, since they know they can't be search leaders forever, they really can't afford not diversifying and not experimenting with all possible services, trying to see which one sticks and which could be monetized. So I expect it's going to be much worse in the future.
• reustle 6y ago
  Check out privacy friendly alternatives to Google products on https://nomoregoogle.com/ https://nomoregoogle.com/
• mcrittenden 6y ago
  I maintain a paid Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom-keyboard/logpjaacgmcbpdkdchjiaagddngobkck https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom-k...) and I've had a very similar experience with the frustrating repeat automated shutdown emails, except that so far my extension hasn't been actually shut down. I'm just waiting for the day that it happens at this point. I'm surprised it has not happened before now, since my extension requires a lot of permissions to do its job. In my case, I make a nice little side income from that extension so it would be a noticeable income hit. But I'm not sure of anything I can really do to prevent it from being shut down if and when Google's robots decide the time has come.
  • droitbutch 6y ago
    An interesting extension but I am a bit surprised - it seems the target users are developers, which generally have the wherewithal to download the repo and install themselves - how does this result in a "noticeable income"? Sorry, not trying to be obtuse, just curious from a side-income perspective.
    • mcrittenden 6y ago
      It surprised me too. I started charging a few months ago after it was free for ~7 years. Now I'm making $600 a month off of it. Paying users seem to be part productivity nerds who maybe aren't technical enough to grok installing from the repo, and part people who just choose to pay for the automatic upgrades or to support the developer. Also, lots of users are web gamers who use it for in-game automation. I wrote a post about it 1 week after monetizing, if you're curious: https://critter.blog/2020/01/14/week-1-of-monetizing-my-chrome-extension/ https://critter.blog/2020/01/14/week-1-of-monetizing-my-chro...
• naderkhalil 6y ago
  If google takes down an extension but it has loyal followers, they can still side load the extension, right?
• Cymen 6y ago
  Hi Azer! It's been a while. I had the same problem with a Chrome extension for my side project Defero (school information system). It uses InboxSDK to integrate the Defero address book with GMail. Unfortunately, it got flagged for security review and it kept getting rejected no matter what I changed. I ended up concluding my authentication mechanism and/or my use of InboxSDK was causing problems so I'm going to try changing the authentication mechanism. But working with the Google to try to get it fixed and finding the cryptic warnings they hide in various parts of the developer console has been extremely annoying. I don't blame you for your decision.
• mritchie712 6y ago
  Kozmos, can someone suggest an alternative / replacement?
• znpy 6y ago
  I wonder if it would be possible to build a casa against Google and start a legal litigation on this matters.
• sneak 6y ago
  This isn’t a Google issue. This is a platforms-that-can-enable-censorship issue. Google is just an instance of the class. All of the instances of the class are subject to this problem. Fixing Google’s policies will not eliminate this danger. Censorship platforms that do not permit the user an escape hatch (iOS App Store, I’m looking at you) are ultimately able to decide what we see, what we read, what we are allowed to think. They can disappear entire bodies of work without even a notification. Do not use censorship platforms.
• greatgib 6y ago
  Like with appstores, Big Co are taking too much power over our free will. Let's hope that antitrust agencies will finally investigate them on this subject!
• tomaszs 6y ago
  I like that the author called automated answer system of Google Chrome extensions what it is. And it is bullying indeed. It is yet another raport about misbehaviour of this company torwards developers. Why in earth we should accept corporation bullying developers when we set up policies in communities for everyone to feel safe? There is no place for double standards. I hope the author will support the free internet by providing services outside the closed ecosystem of Google
• dade_ 6y ago
  Digital needs a human touch. Google never understood this, and I would never trust them with anything important. Too many nightmares with their robots. Generally, I don’t care, dumped Google and Chrome, but the Nest thermostat hurt.
• trashburger 6y ago
  Another victim of the Chrome Extension AI. Seems like the PR move of last week was nothing beyond that, a PR move. I expect them to backpedal again like they did with Pushbullet, but it's too late now.
  • molszanski 6y ago
    But thousands other will perish
• reidacdc 6y ago
  I see these stories from time to time, and I can't help but wonder if there's an opportunity for some kind of third-party support for Google. Like, if you were a former Googler or someone who'd been through their customer-support wringer, and you had some contacts, you could set yourself up as a consultant for small-scale Google account holders who run into this. Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell "Google insurance", a group of small devs could pool some money to pay for access to Google support when the hammer randomly falls on one of them. This idea brought to you by my experience with various government bureaucracies, which are nominally publicly accessible, but, due to under-staffing and high demand for services, are more productively approached through the right kind of lawyer.
  • hartator 6y ago
    That will be great but that’s just corruption.
  • xg15 6y ago
    > Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell "Google insurance" There are organisations that already work like this in many countries of the world. That's usually what we want to get away from.
  • paultopia 6y ago
    Apparently this exists for Amazon sellers already. See: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
• devit 6y ago
  Especially since it seems that this extension is for paid users, you can tell them to use Firefox instead (or use Chromium and sideload the extension).
• xg15 6y ago
  Old and busted: Google unexpectedly cancelling their products. New hotness: Google unexpectedly cancelling other peoples' products.
  • libria 6y ago
    Weird. My mind automatically pictures this in the Drake and Distracted Boyfriend memes, which is the reverse purpose of what memes were designed for. Repetition is powerful.
  • o10449366 6y ago
    Google must be an awesome place to work as an engineer because apparently you just generally don't have to worry about deprecating your products/services or interacting with your customers. Amazon is notorious for their oncall and stubbornness when it comes to sunsetting services. Everyone I know that works there hates the burden that comes with being "customer obsessed." I never hear any complaints like that from the people I know at Google.
    • syshum 6y ago
      hmmm I wonder why GCP is having such a hard time getting enterprise customers... I wonder what both AWS and Azure have that google does not???
    • mschuster91 6y ago
      Amazon is good if you are the customer. If you are a vendor, you're as fucked as if you'd use Paypal, the horror stories about automated systems booting people off of Amazon with no way to reach a human that can override the decision are rampant.
      • labster 6y ago
        Amazon is good if you are the customer, right up until they use the data they collected from your product to launch their own competing service.
• antjanus 6y ago
  Wish I had known about this product. This seems like a really awesome bookmarking service -- better than most I've seen. :( This is also so terribly common. I had a Twitter account get suspended for 2 months...with no explanation. I appealed it but it still took 2 months. What if that had been my main source of revenue? They restored the account without much explanation. We really need _real_ people to make decisions like this. Oh it's not scaleable? Then maybe it's not a product you can sustain.
  • temac 6y ago
    > What if that had been my main source of revenue? I'm not saying that people who did are in the wrong, but yeah, don't do that. Likewise, it is very risky to have Youtube as a unique source of revenue, etc. Or even to diversify but across the same platform company/holding... You should not take such critical dependencies even if they had real people doing proper reviews, because they can very well change their terms when they want, in unpredictable ways.
    • antjanus 6y ago
      Oh, I agree! There are so many YT creators now that discuss how their videos are demonetized and how it's fucking them over but they're okay because of Patreon support. Same with me. If I lost my Twitter account, I could rebuild it -- my _actual_ following at the time had more to do with my blog and RSS (miss those days :( ); however, it shows that you can't really trust that an account is yours or that as long as you follow rules, you get to keep using the site. Or that you'll get a "fair trial" when you're accused of breaking rules. It doesn't help that these companies also punish you for getting accused when they _do_ have manual review. One of my photos on FB got mistakenly flagged, reviewed and approved that it's fine, and I still had a 7-day ban from posting/commenting. Youtube has that 3 strikes rule or whatever where if you get accused 3 times or more of copyright infringement (even if false and retracted), you lose monetization.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• hmert 6y ago
  Google never invest/pay attention enough on support.
• tomohawk 6y ago
  Another sad story of how a person's passion is quashed by big-corp monopoly. When you're on the receiving end, the actions of Google are indistinguishable from those of traditional bureaucracies except that instead of training people to follow scripts, they have bots that take care of things automatically. Unfortunately for us humans, Google's model of automating the disregard seems sustainable and profitable.
• geza 6y ago
  I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own open-source extension HabitLab ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ ) that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and every update I try to submit is rejected by their system after about 3-4 days) and I feel utterly helpless. It's only used by about 12,000 users so unlike PushBullet I probably don't have the visibility to get a human to intervene, so will be going the way of Kozmos most likely.
  • panic 6y ago
    Dealing with Google these days seems a lot like dealing with an authoritarian government. To operate safely on Google's platforms, you need a friend who works at Google who can vouch for you as their over-eager police keep trying to put you in jail.
    • singron 6y ago
      I'm not sure how this would work legally with employment contracts, but it would be worth it to get your employees hired at Google so they can professionally execute that role for you. We have joked before about not poaching friends from Google since they are more valuable working there than at your company.
      • znpy 6y ago
        Ah, this might seem like a joke but it's true. I was part of a student association when I was an university student. Part of the activities was to host gnu/Linux courses record them and upload them to YouTube. One day, out of the blue, the channel goes dark and nobody knows why. We all panicked. We had received no warnings and there was no way to appeal. In the end, we asked some former students that were employed by Google to pull some levers internally, and we managed to get our channel restored.
        • 6y ago
• m00dy 6y ago
  This is same the guy who owns the leftpad package on npm :)
• cryptoquick 6y ago
  I wonder if anyone is keeping track of just how many developers are completely writing off Google just because their support is so terrible, and their policies so absurdly draconian. People give shit to Jeff Bezos all the time, but compared to Google, there is no comparison to the level of company-wide user hostility and blatant privacy violations with such little public accountability, as that of Google's.
• nahtnam 6y ago
  Honestly, I'd be willing to pay $50 a year or something if that means that the bots are less strict when reviewing my app (sort of like what Apple does)
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  Firefox isn't an option?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• rusabd 6y ago
  Eventually, somebody will write bots to deal with this robotic bureaucracy and it will be matter of how much licenses and CPU power you have to negotiate a better deal. Essentially, it will be like rich people nowadays solve issues between themselves using lawers.
• retpirato 6y ago
  It wouldn't be the first time developers where "trolled" with take down notices. The same thing just happened to pushbullet. Fortunately they were given notice & resolved it & will stay on the store. At least for the time being anyway. We'll see if it happens again. Is this a really common problem?
• exabrial 6y ago
  If anybody at Google is wondering why they are about to face antitrust action... Here you go.
• droitbutch 6y ago
  Scrolling through the comments, many seem to think this was unintentional, mistake, or overzealous AI. However, the author said this has been ongoing for 2years: > "Google's Chrome Extension team has been giving me a complete nightmare since last two years." What if the extension violated some policy that he either overlooked or is not publicly stated?
  • rdgthree 6y ago
    Generally if you take the approach "what might I be doing wrong?" instead of aggressively asserting "I am doing nothing wrong!", you're able to uncover some solution on your side. I rarely ever try to deal with support because it often ends in no/poor resolutions. I would guess there's something in this extension that looks very similar to suspicious activity (regardless of whether it is) and some light refactoring would resolve the issue of repeated flagging. Not suggesting this is right or good, but it's probably less time consuming and more effective than emailing back and forth for two years.
• retpirato 6y ago
  You could always switch to firefox. Hopefully they don't have stupid algorithms like that.
• ianwalter 6y ago
  It's a shame that so many of the comments have to do with left-pad. Kozmos was a great piece of software and I will miss it even though I haven't used it in a while. It came very close to how I personally think a bookmarking service should work, which is pretty incredible for something made by a single person. Seems like a lot of people have been complaining about the Chrome extension store lately. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes there. Anyway, looking forward to your next project Azer.
  • thread_id 6y ago
    I would really benefit from this product. I'm working across three computers and I have book marks all over the place. A central repository that enhances searching and categorization would be awsome.
    • ianwalter 6y ago
      Yea, I actually offered to take over development of Kozmos, but wasn't taken up on the offer. I'm going to build my own solution one day, just because I am so interested in it, but until then I use Raindrop.
    • kirubakaran 6y ago
      Does this suit your needs? https://histre.com/ https://histre.com/ I'm the person building it, so please let me know if you have any questions.
• spicyramen 6y ago
  I guess the Product Manager(s) from Chrome extensions at this should reply with clarity of how they are dealing with this.
• doc_gunthrop 6y ago
  One important thing that's missing from the author's story is the why. What is it that's triggering the robotic take-down notices?
  • hrktb 6y ago
    This is of course an interesting point that would satisfy curiosity. But if we are to accept the author’s central claim that it was reviewed and accepted by humans many times in these two years, the why isn’t really important. IMO it would just make the story more interesting, not critically different. Now if you have reason to think that central claim is bullshit that’s another question. PS: also in this types of automated triggers, getting to know what triggered the warnings is in itself a pretty hard task. I think a number of extensions just get removed without ever knowing exactly why it happened.
  • sb8244 6y ago
    I've been on the receiving end of cryptic takedown in the past and there was absolutely no indication of why. Had to just start trying different things to see what stuck.
• vzaliva 6y ago
  I had a small harmless extension which does not access ANY user information and completely client-side. I received cryptic takedown notice and was not able to convince them it is not in violation of their policies. They never specify what policy exactly you violate, just keep referring to the whole document. Finally I decided it is not worth it and took down my extension.
• mariz-io 6y ago
  I feel you, keep being reject for a simple extension with generic explanation and no guidance on how to fix it(if there is anything to fix). Decided to share on a github repo and let users installed manually following a video tutorial... really bad experience and communication.
• vzaliva 6y ago
  Is Firefox any better in this respect? I am seriously considering switching.
  • droitbutch 6y ago
    Probably, but browser extension developers need to go where the users are. Google has leverage and knows it.
  • TheRealPomax 6y ago
    If it bothers you enough "to switch", that implies you've not been writing extensions using universal web extension code, in which case.... what? Why not? The only massive difference is the namespace ("broswer" vs. "chrome"), which is trivially shimmed, and promises vs. callbacks, which is also easily made universal. But having said that, if you're considering switching you probably also want to consider telling your paid customers how to install your extension themselves, rather than sending them over to Google's extension "store".
• bartread 6y ago
  Maybe they're still angry with him about leftpad.</joke> Yes, it really is the same guy: https://kodfabrik.com/journal/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules https://kodfabrik.com/journal/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules. And, joking aside it would be wise to bear in mind that we're reading only one side of the story here. As with leftpad, there's another side to this. With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you" (https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of-the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.ld8o5zqz7 https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breakin...), and then wrought global havoc on npm users. Now he's claiming the Chrome Extension Team "continuously troll developers", and is pulling down something he's created... again. I only have two data points, so the behaviour here is a coincidence rather than a pattern, but I will guarantee you whatever you think of Google there is more to this than meets the eye. I'm not without sympathy for the author, but neither am I about to uncritically take his side.
  • ivanhoe 6y ago
    The perspective of the other side is not hard to guess here: support costs money, it's way easier and cheaper to automate it, and if it hurts a few people here and there no one really cares because there're millions of other users (and no much alternative anyway). We all know that Google's support sucks, even they know it very well, just they don't give a shit. Everyone's pissed about this for years - anyone who ever tried to debug adsense, gmail or youtube account getting blocked out of the blue, or android app being flagged for no reason has gone through pretty much the same process this guy describes. Internet is full of horror stories of this kind, it's very well documented. The only difference here is that most of us goes "c'est la vie" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and we continue using their services because - well - everyone else does it, what else could we do... while this guy doesn't mind giving them the finger... which will, and of course he knows that, hurt him much more than Google - but that's a move to be respected imho...
  • acituan 6y ago
    > I only have two data points, so the behaviour here is a coincidence rather than a pattern, but I will guarantee you whatever you think of Google there is more to this than meets the eye. You seem to want us to question the narrative based on the likability of the developer, but is it really relevant? Can you really imagine a data point that we don't know that will change the narrative of "solo developer getting steamrolled by corporate machinery"? Because that is what is happening in both cases. I want to be clear, this is not even about the solo developer actually being in the right, it is about the process or lack thereof that takes place to reach the conclusion. You might not like this particular guy, but I guarantee you a more likable guy would be/will be/is being equally strong-armed in these lopsided processes. Transparency, accountability and fairness would make all of us happy and not left guessing who might be right based on who writes the most likable emails or has the most popular brand.
• mcintyre1994 6y ago
  I have to wonder how PayPal are feeling about their $4 billion acquisition of Honey now, which requests permission to read/write on all websites and exists solely as a browser extension. They're on multiple browsers, but I doubt either Mozilla or Apple will be particularly interested to protect what's presumably now a massive PayPal data mining operation.
  • TheKarateKid 6y ago
    PayPal is part of the Silicon Valley circle-jerk, so they will get a warning or a pass from Google and Apple just like Facebook did with Onavo.
  • lethologica 6y ago
    I would think lawyers at PayPal would have a little more 'pull' than a single developer though.
    • syshum 6y ago
      I doubt it would have to go to the lawyers, I am sure the exec's of both companies are members of the same organizations, country clubs, or other social circles
  • eternalny1 6y ago
    Good question, Amazon apparently is also curious: Amazon suspiciously says browser extension Honey is a security risk, now that PayPal owns it https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21059083/amazon-honey-browser-extension-security-risk-paypal-acquisition-competition https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21059083/amazon-honey-brow...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• saltking112 6y ago
  It makes me wonder when behaviors like this becomes an anti-trust issue.
• pictur 6y ago
  I had the same things 3 years ago. The stupidest user experience I have seen is the process of publishing the google chrome extension.
• irrational 6y ago
  Google excels at closing down projects. With all the recent stories I’ve been reading about problems with the extensions team, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Chrome is losing extensions. No extensions - no ad blockers - more money for Google.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  I wonder if increasing the store publish fee from $5 to something closer to $50 would enable better customer support.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• softbankhater 6y ago
  I hope Google will go bankrupt
• brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
  roadbeats, why not port to Firefox? That browser/company respect your privacy, which seems to matter a lot to you. I don't have any personal experience, though I haven't read any(maybe one, many years ago?) horrible situations like yours at Moz://a
• iJohnDoe 6y ago
  Everyone should realize by now there are no bots at Google. There are only Google engineers and outsourced workers behind every single “bot”, figuratively and literally. Every nightmare story about accounts being disabled by a bot, or Adsense payouts being canceled, or apps taken out of the App Store, or extensions being shutdown, all done by Google engineers or outsourced workers. These Google people are doing it because they can and because they are jealous of others’ success. They are also doing it because Google has lost their way in the last few years and they are bored, among other reasons. They also continually screw with web site search results to harm certain sites, individuals, and companies for much the same reasons as mentioned above. Trust me when I tell you that there are no bots behind these final decisions. It’s being done by Google engineers and their outsourced workers.
• molszanski 6y ago
  I think Google is shutting down chrome extensions
• shripadk 6y ago
  <rant> I feel Google, Facebook and Twitter need to take a big step back and stop antagonizing paying users: be it developers or advertisers. A majority of the issues stem from horribly strict enforcement of policies. What these sites expect from us mere mortals is to do a tightrope walk every time we create and launch something. And some of these policies are actually ridiculous. I understand the fallout of Cambridge Analytica has caused all these sites to give more importance to policy enforcement but the solution to that problem does not lie in automating it through use of technology alone. Business and people's livelihood depend on these policy enforcement. God forbid your business Ad account is shutdown for good because you used a word that causes some stupid algorithm somewhere trigger an automatic ban. It has happened to me. And worst part is you have no recourse. I have spoken directly with Google Execs who were assigned to a client of mine for managing a big ad account. Even they were clueless as to why the system suspended the account. After a lot of digging around I realized that it was because I had used the same credit card in two different accounts. I mean really? Come on! I am lucky I had a Google Exec who was in contact with me because the client was high value. What would small businesses be going through if the same thing happened to them? I shudder to think. All these sites need to relax with their enforcement of policies. Deploy humans for this. We already have a lot of unemployment due to this pandemic and this would be a great time to payback some of those profits by employing more support staff. AI is good but it is not good enough yet to have such levels of control. </rant>
  • sensible123 6y ago
    Humans require salaries and Google is a giant machine for turning attention/intent into money. Adding humans into the loop just creates friction for the money printing part. And as you noted, they care when the person spending money is rich enough. It's everyone else that loses with their system. I've been reading these stories for as long as I can remember knowing about HN. People don't seem to quite learn that Google is a machine for printing money and unless you're paying them they don't care.
• stevespang 6y ago
  Seems the Europeans only the only ones exercising power over Google, wouldn't be interesting if developers established nexus in Europe through servers or other means, then started feeding these complaints to Vestager, resulting in rules and laws will be created that punish Google for such behavior, forbid them to act like spoiled children, set monetary damages they must reimburse individual developers.
• duncan_bayne 6y ago
  I remember when the Free Software movement really started to make inroads into the corporate world, which in my circles was the late 90s / early 2000s. It was like a revelation. No longer were we tied to inflexible, command-and-conquer style platforms. We could fix bugs ourselves, instead of waiting for years for vendors to maybe fix the bugs we diligently reported. We could distribute our own libraries and packages in minutes, with licenses of our own choice. There was no corporate gatekeeper standing in the way. (But what of security, you ask? Look at Lenovo and Superfish ... that was a MITM attack produced by the supposed gatekeepers). Now it seems things have come full circle, and a younger generation of developers is discovering, once again, that writing software for closed, proprietary systems is a mug's game. Only now, those platforms seem even more strongly entrenched, courtesy the mobile duopoly and web monopoly.
• baryphonic 6y ago
  I have a theory about Google: They're using AI to handle moderation (among other tasks) and it's sort of effective but fails in a lot of frustrating cases, but they cannot admit that the lack of explainability is a serious flaw in their model or that they'd actually need to have humans in the loop to filter out the garbage experiences. Instead, they use humans but treat them almost like bots (probably easier to build more training datasets that way) and put up a hermetically sealed firewall between these moderators and the public. Google briefly disabled my Google account last year, and it spooked me. I had created a "brand account" to use with YouTube, and for some reason the new account was flagged for suspension within the first day. I was annoyed, but it didn't bother me too much, and I submitted my appeal (aside: I always feel wonderful having no clue what I'm appealing - I'm pretty sure even the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany would have given me the dignity of knowing what I'd been convicted of before the trial + execution/Gulag). Two days later, I woke up to two emails from Google: the first indicating that my main Google account - the one where I have my email, several domain names and YouTube TV - had been suspended; the second indicating that the team reviewed my appeal and had found I hadn't violated any policies and my account had been reinstated, but that I'd need to login soon. I logged in posthaste and found that my brand account was still disabled, but at least I could read and backup my email. (At the time I also happened to be in salary negotiations with my then-client and now employer. Really wonderful timing.) I tried to submit another appeal on the brand account suspension, explaining that I'd received a reinstatement email referencing the original ticket number, and that all their team had done was erroneously disable and reenable my main account. This time, I got a response saying that I already had an appeal pending so I'd need to wait for it to be resolved. If I really cared that much, I could have tried again to explain again that actually it was their mistake, yada yada, but it wasn't worth it. I didn't want my account to be suspended again with very little recourse other than trying to use my network to get something done internally. Like with a corrupt cop, the prudent strategy was to just walk away and avoid conversation. I've since stopped using Chrome, and I find that I prefer DuckDuckGo to Google (DDG feels like Google Search used to before $GOOG started blindly trusting deep learning to solve everything). I have hardened my resolve against ever touching an Android device, and I use an adblocker zealously. I haven't fully moved my mail or DNS stuff away, but I am much more cautious. I didn't realize in 2004 when I signed up for Gmail that I'd be entrusting my life's records to an organization that makes the DMV look like an expert at efficiency and customer support. I'd hope that OP and the various other developers here could maybe band together and maybe consult a lawyer. I have a feeling that given the legal realities of discrimination law and the like, Google's policies and enforcement procedures are bound to be in violation, especially considering the law in its home state. Google's behavior is not merely evil in these cases, but evil and incompetent.
• abbadadda 6y ago
  STOP BUILDING FOR CHROME. THEY WILL DELETE YOU. THEY WILL INVALIDATE YOU. OR THEY WILL COPY YOU.
  • abbadadda 6y ago
    Go ahead and downvote... same goes for Amazon (hello antirust), Facebook, and any other company. They are not your friend... they are your adversary.
• themarkers 6y ago
  It’s really stop me to make a extension business.
• cft 6y ago
  I switched to Firefox because of Google's draconian extension policy and don't regret it
• sergiogjr 6y ago
  Well, now with MS Edge, wouldn't it be an option to move to its store and flip Google off? Just a thought.
• sergiogjr 6y ago
  Now with MS Edge, wouldn't it be an option just to move to its store and flip Google off? Just a thought.
• ernsheong 6y ago
  I replied to the latest version update rejection email (referring to policies) from the Chrome Web Store. They actually replied and my latest extension revision went through. Point is, you can actually reply... there is a channel (form) in the Web Store as well, but of course you can only hope to get a reply.
• caogecym 6y ago
  Google should really look into this. Improve your developer support experience, that’s the right way to treat your ecosystem contributors.
• VohuMana 6y ago
  I keep seeing these things pop up on here and I am starting to get the sense that the Chrome team at Google feels it is too big to fail. They don't seem to care about fixing their system, but once developers leave to your competitor you're in trouble. Just look at Windows Phone, pretty solid OS had some nice features that Android and iOS didn't but at the end of the day no developers really wanted to make apps for it so it died a slow death. With the new Edge supporting Chrome Extensions, I wonder if some of these devs are going to move their extensions over to that or do like Kosmos and just move on to some other project that is outside the reach of Google. All in all it is sad to see Kosmos go, I used it back in 2017 and really liked it. I didn't make the jump to the paid version but it was a well put together extension and solved a problem I think many users have.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  Why are google unable to offer ongoing services? Anything that requires management is always a disaster for them (DCMA notices on YouTube, hell any part of YouTube for creators, Nest, now this). I’ve worked at small trading companies where if you’re not directly involved in the act of trading, you’re just a cost centre to be minimised. Is it that?
• ezoe 6y ago
  Don't relies on somebody else's distribution platform as you sole way to distribute your software. They totally deserve it.
• fouc 6y ago
  There is a trend here, Safari 12 killed off extensions. Now Chrome is killing off extensions. And possibly Firefox too?
  • sethish 6y ago
    Unlike Safari and Chrome, Firefox doesn't have a financial incentive to prevent ad-blockers. In fact, they did extra work to their Firefox Preview (mobile) app to integrate an ad blocking plugin as early as possible.
• mikulabc 6y ago
  Someone should collect all those HN posts and send them on LinkedIn to all google employees as a PM, there must be someone important that will review this or forward it directly to a department? https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrentCompany=%5B%221441%22%2C%22791962%22%2C%2216140%22%2C%2210440912%22%5D https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...