17 ms·

How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension with 24k+ users (2016)

142 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

usrusr 6y ago
Reminds me of how Mozilla once permanently obliterated every single extension at once except for a really tiny accept-list...
- eitland 6y ago
  On mobile, that is. On desktop they just shot themselves in the foot by removing some off their competitive advantage. (On desktop they are still way ahead of Chrome when it comes to extensions, but it is nothing compared to before when they was in another league completely.)
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Reminds me of how I turned off autoupdate on my mobile browser...
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    Seriously this Firefox update was a massive bait-and-switch for me. I was on holiday and out of the loop on how big of change this Phoenix upgrade would be, got a notification on Android to update firefox and went through without realizing the massive UX and functionality downgrade this Firefox version is. Apart from the non-starter of missing add-ons, the whole UX overhaul is insane, so many things that use to be frequent single tap are now two, three, tabs plus swipe up/down business. With the risk of not sounding constructive, I don't know who in their right mind proposed this but it's crazy to me that it went through hundreds of beta-testers without nobody complaining, or that nobody accepted feedback against this if it existed.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      I've been using it from day 1 since it was known as Firefox Preview (way before it landed in nightly) and I have very little to complain about. uBO, Privacy Badger, and DecentralEyes are all the extensions I need. Stuff renders quicker, I can swipe between tabs, reader mode is there. Sure, it might take one additional tap to open a new tab, but I'm fine with that. I'm now using nightly, so I experience an occasional bug here and there, but I don't care.
      - zeveb 6y ago
        > uBO, Privacy Badger, and DecentralEyes are all the extensions I need. I want Stylus. > Sure, it might take one additional tap to open a new tab, but I'm fine with that. Why? Why regress? What possible use did it serve?
    - notimetorelax 6y ago
      I think it’s usually the latter. Either the feedback wasn’t heard or wasn’t sought.
kranner 6y ago
> You can still find the ad blocker extension here. However, you will not be able to run it. Chrome made changes so that extensions cannot be side-loaded without an enterprise profile. You can currently sideload extensions in Chrome by turning on Developer Mode, right?
- gray_-_wolf 6y ago
  Which I think lasts only until you restart the browser? Hardly a good user experience..
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cookiengineer 6y ago
    Why not use Ungoogled Chromium [1] instead? Developer Mode is active forever, and no Google-centric integrations. [1] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
    - tn890 6y ago
      > Why not use Ungoogled Chromium [1] instead? Why not use Firefox instead? Then you've solved the problem for good.
      - nvrspyx 6y ago
        The same restriction applies on Firefox. Sideloaded extensions disappear after every restart. Only Developer Edition allows sideloaded extensions to persist.
        ffpip 6y ago
        > Sideloaded extensions disappear after every restart No. I have 2-3 extensions installed directly from Github. You can't do that on chrome.
blue_cookeh 6y ago
Ah yes, typical Google support strikes again. Filled us with so much confidence we left Google Cloud.
- Google234 6y ago
  I can find 100k examples of people angry with Amazon. Does that invalidate AWS?
  - vkowalski 6y ago
    It's a question of trust not anger.
    - Google234 6y ago
      Why do you think they are angry? You don’t think those people have lost trust in Amazon?
      - candiodari 6y ago
        I think people are angry because Google is really perceived to have been more trustworthy before than they are today. Hence there's a betrayal factor. Amazon is like CPS: everybody's known you cannot trust them to properly handle and care for a plastic cactus and they were told this when they were 5 year old.
        tapland 6y ago
        Just about everyone now has at least one example of a service they loved being killed off by google.
      - stevenjohns 6y ago
        I am not worried that Amazon would shut down all of AWS any time soon. Can you honestly say it would be a complete surprise, however, if Google announced an EOL for GCP?
fakedang 6y ago
To be expected of a company where you get better support from their cloud service employees on reddit rather than on their actual website or emails.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  They're in the short list of companies that practice shame-based support.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    What's that?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      It's where you have to shame them by publishing an article on HN/reddit/wherever about how they screwed you before they'll fix your problem.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Ahh yes, the way I have to deal with my cloud provider, as well as my local fast food outlet's delivery service. Very high tech. Thanks for the heads-up
    - jlokier 6y ago
      It's where you can't get support except by getting a successful post on social media that shames the company into dealing with your issue.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Thanks
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago
goldenkey 6y ago
It's really disappointing for me to hear this, considering that I have been releasing chrome extensions for the past year. [1,2,3] One thing I've noticed is that Chrome's extension search is absolute garbage, and even typing the exact name of my extensions, for example "Wikipedia Section Links" [3], doesn't yield my extension, not even on the first page, and the second page is rather hidden and not obvious. Pretty terrible discovery... Why should we develop for such a hostile ecosystem? Perhaps I lucked out by developing all my extensions as cross-browser web extensions. I've been submitting them all to as many repositories as I can - Chrome, Mozilla, Edge, and Opera. I feel bad for the author who doesn't have the ability to move their extension to a different browser. Chrome lock-in is a travesty. [1] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/17/coursera-quiz-printer-a-cross-browser-webextension/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/17/coursera-quiz-pr... [2] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/15/coursera-playback-speed-a-cross-browser-webextension/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/15/coursera-playbac... [3] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/01/20/a-simple-webextension-for-every-browser-wikipedia-section-links/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/01/20/a-simple-webexte...
- zenopopovici 6y ago
  I did. It’s avaliable for Safari. https://apps.graffino.com https://apps.graffino.com I’m the original author. It happens a while back ago though. I never developed for Chrome again.
  - goldenkey 6y ago
    Ah, glad to hear that - its our duty to support better browsers!
- Fnoord 6y ago
  You would think a Google project like Google Chrome would benefit from Google Search.
  - goldenkey 6y ago
    Indeed. Here are the relevant links by the way: Chrome extension search: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/wikipedia%20links https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/wikipedia%20links Extension page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-links/mnkbmdogccajgbjdijhelbdmjcpgpehi?hl=en&gl=US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-links/mn...
dep_b 6y ago
We had an issue with getting a new Android app we wrote that accessing the call logs for a legit business case (something that would benefit the user alone, not in any case sent to us) reviewed and it took months to resolve it. The best thing was emailing and waiting for another week or so, hoping the case would be picked up by a human being that would take the effort to really look into the issue. Now Apple doesn't even allow you to access the logs to begin with and even if they would they can be royal dicks during the review process, but I was always under the assumption I was dealing with a human at every step from the initial rejection and once I een simply could explain what my business case was over the phone with one of their people instead of endlessly mailing back and forth. Nothing has been stuck for more than a week.
- zenopopovici 6y ago
  Apple actually handled my situation a lot better and didn’t block me. I am the original author.
  - dep_b 6y ago
    That's what I tried to say, Apple can be problematic at times but you're always dealing with humans instead of something that seems like an unstoppable machine.
malikNF 6y ago
I wonder how long before we start hearing stories like "How chrome obliterated my 4 year old website" On a serious note though, why do we keep getting trapped in this cycle so many times? Company walled garden(WG) comes up with a WG, developers build for that WG. WG forgets about the people who made the WG a fun place for everyone to be in. WG screws over the old developers who's hard work it build itself on. And the developers complain about the walled garden being a walled garden. Like what the hell, is there really a solution to this?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I dunno, I for one hope developers build sites according to standards (instead of Chrome-only features), and Chrome has a big test suite to test said features. I mean 20 year old websites still work just fine in Chrome. It's only those that do nonstandard things - like IE's tech, Flash, Java applets - that they no longer work. Famously, the old Space Jam website seems to work just fine: https://www.spacejam.com/ https://www.spacejam.com/
  - Narretz 6y ago
    I think the parent post is alluding to scenarios where Google uses their market position to stop loading websites based on other factors. i.e. a website that does or doesn't implement a certain API. It's a very dystopian view, though.
    - malikNF 6y ago
      >>It's a very dystopian view, though. When you see this cycle of developers flocking to a walled garden and then the same developers who helped uplift the platform get burned repeat enough times you start to lose a bit of hope in the way things are working. But I do have to agree with you, my original post does sound dystopian.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    When building web games the browser differences can bite you even if you're following the standard. Firefox is currently rolling out WebRender which hopefully will solve the performance issues I'm facing (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025).
mywacaday 6y ago
As a user paying extra for google storage the constant flow of stories of people having issues with google and nobody to contact scare me. What happens if I loose access to my account and loose gmail/photos/drive. What do people use to backup Google?
- Daniel_sk 6y ago
  Leave Google, use separate services. I solved it by purchasing my own domain address, moving from Gmail to Fastmail, replaced Android with iOS, replaced Chrome with Firefox, moved my passwords to 1Password, moved from Google Photos to iCloud (it automatically downloads all your pictures to your desktop as backup. There is no such thing for Google Photos).
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I similarly purchased my own domain (an absolutely crucial step for everyone), moved to Fastmail (which I like much better than Gmail, it's just so much faster!), use BitWarden, replaced Chrome with Firefox, and use Nextcloud for photo backup. You can also use rclone to copy your Google Drive to another storage every night.
  - jamil7 6y ago
    Did pretty much the same although replace Fastmail with Protonmail. I use S3Glacier storage for backups, costs virtually nothing. I keep the gmail account around as something to hand out to spammy websites and other services or forms IRL.
  - Artemix 6y ago
    Almost did the same, except I went towards Syncthing for document sync, KeePassXC for passwords, and Sailfish / degoogled android for mobile phone (because the apple ecosystem is imho much worse, especially in terms of software durability. Got two perfectly working ipads just sitting around because apple said fuck the devs and users. At least, with SOS and android, I can still develop for them).
  - cfontes 6y ago
Ap0c 6y ago
Ran a online retail business for 12 years. One day, Adwords account suspended. Some generic 'voilation' email. No way to resolve, no person to speak to, no comment on the issue. Tried to resolve for months. Fired 15 staff, gave up. Basically the internet = Google when you run online retail.
- imdsm 6y ago
  Was there no way to create a new adwords account?
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Pretty sure that's against tos..
    - shadowprofile77 6y ago
      And.... Who cares? Given Google's absurdly shitty behavior to so many users, its opacity, frequent mendacity, casual indifference to small organizations and let's not even go into all the gory details of its globe-spanning not-even-disregard-but-outright-hatred for any notion of privacy, I'd say anyone who can subvert its TOS and get away with doing so simply to save their livelihood deserves applause much more than scorn.
      - appleflaxen 6y ago
        Even if I don't care about the morality/legality of it, I probably wouldn't bother. Google knows every profile and IP address I've ever used. It would be trivial for them to detect this, and close it down again. It's just not worth the effort.
        nullc 6y ago
        The irony is that the honest users won't expend a lot of effort evading, while the scummier users will (and have a much easier time of it, since they've done it 100 times before). In this way anti-fraud filters sometimes act as pro-fraud filters: False positives kill honest use, and dishonest use finds a way.
meva 6y ago
The author infringed on Facebook name and possibly the logo too. Facebook sent a notice to Google. Google complied with the law and removed the extension. Yet the author blames Google for all this.
- froh 6y ago
  Thank you for this background detail! So actually instead of google, it was FB who with trademark protection legislation took down the app.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    It was Google who complied. They didn't have to (there was no jurisprudence); they chose to. Is Mozilla going to comply with a C&D for removal of Facebook Container for Firefox [1]? I think not. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849452
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    An important question is, did Google ever tell the author who made the complaint so he could contact them or countersue? From the mails that are shown they don’t reveal anything apart from ‘a third party acting on behalf of Facebook’.
    - ucaetano 6y ago
      That would be giving legal advice, which Google (or any company) would avoid at all costs.
    - omega3 6y ago
      It's clearly stated in the email, it was company called Appdetex on behalf of Facebook. It even has a name of the person who submitted the claim.
siraben 6y ago
In the final update post[0] the author says There isn’t any option left to circumvent the Chrome Store. Starting with Chrome 53, extensions cannot be side-loaded anymore. Is it possible that Firefox will undergo such a restriction in the future? [0] https://graffino.com/web-development/after-my-post-went-viral-google-responded-theres-nothing-we-can-do https://graffino.com/web-development/after-my-post-went-vira...
- jwitthuhn 6y ago
  Firefox already has a similar restriction on Windows, and I think MacOS, but not Linux. On the normal version of firefox for those platforms you can't permanently sideload an extension, you need to reload it on each restart. The Developer Edition still lets you sideload addons normally, however.
  - the_pwner224 6y ago
    It's present on Linux too, and probably MacOS. Aside from Developer Edition there's an Unbranded Firefox you can get from Mozilla in English only which will allow it. Or you can compile it yourself with the MOZ_REQUIRE_SIGNING flag disabled, which is not too hard. On Arch Linux it's just download the firefox-nightly-hg AUR package and delete the MOZ_REQUIRE_SIGNING line, then makepkg -s. https://the-pwner224.neocities.org/compiling-firefox/index.html https://the-pwner224.neocities.org/compiling-firefox/index.h... This also provides a good security benefit - for extensions that aren't continually updated you can download them with the "Extension source viewer" extension and then change their ID in the manifest and manually sideload them to prevent them from auto updating and using invasive permissions - malicious buyouts by ad companies are not unheard of in both the Chrome and FF app stores. And also important, you can tweak the extension code as desired. For example the Old Reddit Redirect extension, which automatically switches reddit.com to old.reddit.com also changes new.reddit.com to the old one, so if you ever want to actually visit the new design then you have to disable the addon. There's no way to change this aside from editing the extension and then loading it unsigned.
  - fwn 6y ago
    > On the normal version of firefox for those platforms you can't permanently sideload an extension ... Are you sure about that? I am using Firefox on Windows and I currently have no problem sideloading extensions. They stay enabled and even update automatically. Try, for example, installing this [1] bypass paywall extension via the "Download and install the latest version" link. Works flawless. ... or am I getting something wrong? [1] https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...
edem 6y ago
I'm just curious. Is AWS similar? I never heard an AWS horror story.
bsenftner 6y ago
How anyone can trust Google as a business partner is beyond me. Amazon too. Bunch of tech fools.
victorbstan 6y ago
This kind of matter needs support from government agencies. Unfortunately I don’t know that any government agencies that would be either willing or knowledgeable about what needs to be done to support users and software developers on online platforms. How helpless are developers and users when faced with what is essentially unregulated corporate behaviour.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
previous discussion from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048

142 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

Reminds me of how Mozilla once permanently obliterated every single extension at once except for a really tiny accept-list...

eitland 6y ago
On mobile, that is. On desktop they just shot themselves in the foot by removing some off their competitive advantage. (On desktop they are still way ahead of Chrome when it comes to extensions, but it is nothing compared to before when they was in another league completely.)
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Reminds me of how I turned off autoupdate on my mobile browser...
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Seriously this Firefox update was a massive bait-and-switch for me. I was on holiday and out of the loop on how big of change this Phoenix upgrade would be, got a notification on Android to update firefox and went through without realizing the massive UX and functionality downgrade this Firefox version is. Apart from the non-starter of missing add-ons, the whole UX overhaul is insane, so many things that use to be frequent single tap are now two, three, tabs plus swipe up/down business. With the risk of not sounding constructive, I don't know who in their right mind proposed this but it's crazy to me that it went through hundreds of beta-testers without nobody complaining, or that nobody accepted feedback against this if it existed.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    I've been using it from day 1 since it was known as Firefox Preview (way before it landed in nightly) and I have very little to complain about. uBO, Privacy Badger, and DecentralEyes are all the extensions I need. Stuff renders quicker, I can swipe between tabs, reader mode is there. Sure, it might take one additional tap to open a new tab, but I'm fine with that. I'm now using nightly, so I experience an occasional bug here and there, but I don't care.
    - zeveb 6y ago
      > uBO, Privacy Badger, and DecentralEyes are all the extensions I need. I want Stylus. > Sure, it might take one additional tap to open a new tab, but I'm fine with that. Why? Why regress? What possible use did it serve?
  - notimetorelax 6y ago
    I think it’s usually the latter. Either the feedback wasn’t heard or wasn’t sought.

kranner 6y ago

> You can still find the ad blocker extension here. However, you will not be able to run it. Chrome made changes so that extensions cannot be side-loaded without an enterprise profile. You can currently sideload extensions in Chrome by turning on Developer Mode, right?

gray_-_wolf 6y ago
Which I think lasts only until you restart the browser? Hardly a good user experience..
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  Why not use Ungoogled Chromium [1] instead? Developer Mode is active forever, and no Google-centric integrations. [1] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
  - tn890 6y ago
    > Why not use Ungoogled Chromium [1] instead? Why not use Firefox instead? Then you've solved the problem for good.
    - nvrspyx 6y ago
      The same restriction applies on Firefox. Sideloaded extensions disappear after every restart. Only Developer Edition allows sideloaded extensions to persist.
      - ffpip 6y ago
        > Sideloaded extensions disappear after every restart No. I have 2-3 extensions installed directly from Github. You can't do that on chrome.

blue_cookeh 6y ago

Ah yes, typical Google support strikes again. Filled us with so much confidence we left Google Cloud.

Google234 6y ago
I can find 100k examples of people angry with Amazon. Does that invalidate AWS?
- vkowalski 6y ago
  It's a question of trust not anger.
  - Google234 6y ago
    Why do you think they are angry? You don’t think those people have lost trust in Amazon?
    - candiodari 6y ago
      I think people are angry because Google is really perceived to have been more trustworthy before than they are today. Hence there's a betrayal factor. Amazon is like CPS: everybody's known you cannot trust them to properly handle and care for a plastic cactus and they were told this when they were 5 year old.
      - tapland 6y ago
        Just about everyone now has at least one example of a service they loved being killed off by google.
    - stevenjohns 6y ago
      I am not worried that Amazon would shut down all of AWS any time soon. Can you honestly say it would be a complete surprise, however, if Google announced an EOL for GCP?

fakedang 6y ago

To be expected of a company where you get better support from their cloud service employees on reddit rather than on their actual website or emails.

StavrosK 6y ago
They're in the short list of companies that practice shame-based support.
- fakedang 6y ago
  What's that?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    It's where you have to shame them by publishing an article on HN/reddit/wherever about how they screwed you before they'll fix your problem.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Ahh yes, the way I have to deal with my cloud provider, as well as my local fast food outlet's delivery service. Very high tech. Thanks for the heads-up
  - jlokier 6y ago
    It's where you can't get support except by getting a successful post on social media that shames the company into dealing with your issue.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Thanks
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago

goldenkey 6y ago

It's really disappointing for me to hear this, considering that I have been releasing chrome extensions for the past year. [1,2,3] One thing I've noticed is that Chrome's extension search is absolute garbage, and even typing the exact name of my extensions, for example "Wikipedia Section Links" [3], doesn't yield my extension, not even on the first page, and the second page is rather hidden and not obvious. Pretty terrible discovery... Why should we develop for such a hostile ecosystem? Perhaps I lucked out by developing all my extensions as cross-browser web extensions. I've been submitting them all to as many repositories as I can - Chrome, Mozilla, Edge, and Opera. I feel bad for the author who doesn't have the ability to move their extension to a different browser. Chrome lock-in is a travesty. [1] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/17/coursera-quiz-printer-a-cross-browser-webextension/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/17/coursera-quiz-pr... [2] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/15/coursera-playback-speed-a-cross-browser-webextension/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/10/15/coursera-playbac... [3] https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/01/20/a-simple-webextension-for-every-browser-wikipedia-section-links/ https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/01/20/a-simple-webexte...

zenopopovici 6y ago
I did. It’s avaliable for Safari. https://apps.graffino.com https://apps.graffino.com I’m the original author. It happens a while back ago though. I never developed for Chrome again.
- goldenkey 6y ago
  Ah, glad to hear that - its our duty to support better browsers!
Fnoord 6y ago
You would think a Google project like Google Chrome would benefit from Google Search.
- goldenkey 6y ago
  Indeed. Here are the relevant links by the way: Chrome extension search: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/wikipedia%20links https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/wikipedia%20links Extension page: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-links/mnkbmdogccajgbjdijhelbdmjcpgpehi?hl=en&gl=US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-links/mn...

dep_b 6y ago

We had an issue with getting a new Android app we wrote that accessing the call logs for a legit business case (something that would benefit the user alone, not in any case sent to us) reviewed and it took months to resolve it. The best thing was emailing and waiting for another week or so, hoping the case would be picked up by a human being that would take the effort to really look into the issue. Now Apple doesn't even allow you to access the logs to begin with and even if they would they can be royal dicks during the review process, but I was always under the assumption I was dealing with a human at every step from the initial rejection and once I een simply could explain what my business case was over the phone with one of their people instead of endlessly mailing back and forth. Nothing has been stuck for more than a week.

zenopopovici 6y ago
Apple actually handled my situation a lot better and didn’t block me. I am the original author.
- dep_b 6y ago
  That's what I tried to say, Apple can be problematic at times but you're always dealing with humans instead of something that seems like an unstoppable machine.

malikNF 6y ago

I wonder how long before we start hearing stories like "How chrome obliterated my 4 year old website" On a serious note though, why do we keep getting trapped in this cycle so many times? Company walled garden(WG) comes up with a WG, developers build for that WG. WG forgets about the people who made the WG a fun place for everyone to be in. WG screws over the old developers who's hard work it build itself on. And the developers complain about the walled garden being a walled garden. Like what the hell, is there really a solution to this?

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I dunno, I for one hope developers build sites according to standards (instead of Chrome-only features), and Chrome has a big test suite to test said features. I mean 20 year old websites still work just fine in Chrome. It's only those that do nonstandard things - like IE's tech, Flash, Java applets - that they no longer work. Famously, the old Space Jam website seems to work just fine: https://www.spacejam.com/ https://www.spacejam.com/
- Narretz 6y ago
  I think the parent post is alluding to scenarios where Google uses their market position to stop loading websites based on other factors. i.e. a website that does or doesn't implement a certain API. It's a very dystopian view, though.
  - malikNF 6y ago
    >>It's a very dystopian view, though. When you see this cycle of developers flocking to a walled garden and then the same developers who helped uplift the platform get burned repeat enough times you start to lose a bit of hope in the way things are working. But I do have to agree with you, my original post does sound dystopian.
- Kiro 6y ago
  When building web games the browser differences can bite you even if you're following the standard. Firefox is currently rolling out WebRender which hopefully will solve the performance issues I'm facing (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=925025).

mywacaday 6y ago

As a user paying extra for google storage the constant flow of stories of people having issues with google and nobody to contact scare me. What happens if I loose access to my account and loose gmail/photos/drive. What do people use to backup Google?

Daniel_sk 6y ago
Leave Google, use separate services. I solved it by purchasing my own domain address, moving from Gmail to Fastmail, replaced Android with iOS, replaced Chrome with Firefox, moved my passwords to 1Password, moved from Google Photos to iCloud (it automatically downloads all your pictures to your desktop as backup. There is no such thing for Google Photos).
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I similarly purchased my own domain (an absolutely crucial step for everyone), moved to Fastmail (which I like much better than Gmail, it's just so much faster!), use BitWarden, replaced Chrome with Firefox, and use Nextcloud for photo backup. You can also use rclone to copy your Google Drive to another storage every night.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Did pretty much the same although replace Fastmail with Protonmail. I use S3Glacier storage for backups, costs virtually nothing. I keep the gmail account around as something to hand out to spammy websites and other services or forms IRL.
- Artemix 6y ago
  Almost did the same, except I went towards Syncthing for document sync, KeePassXC for passwords, and Sailfish / degoogled android for mobile phone (because the apple ecosystem is imho much worse, especially in terms of software durability. Got two perfectly working ipads just sitting around because apple said fuck the devs and users. At least, with SOS and android, I can still develop for them).
- cfontes 6y ago

Ap0c 6y ago

Ran a online retail business for 12 years. One day, Adwords account suspended. Some generic 'voilation' email. No way to resolve, no person to speak to, no comment on the issue. Tried to resolve for months. Fired 15 staff, gave up. Basically the internet = Google when you run online retail.

imdsm 6y ago
Was there no way to create a new adwords account?
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Pretty sure that's against tos..
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    And.... Who cares? Given Google's absurdly shitty behavior to so many users, its opacity, frequent mendacity, casual indifference to small organizations and let's not even go into all the gory details of its globe-spanning not-even-disregard-but-outright-hatred for any notion of privacy, I'd say anyone who can subvert its TOS and get away with doing so simply to save their livelihood deserves applause much more than scorn.
    - appleflaxen 6y ago
      Even if I don't care about the morality/legality of it, I probably wouldn't bother. Google knows every profile and IP address I've ever used. It would be trivial for them to detect this, and close it down again. It's just not worth the effort.
      - nullc 6y ago
        The irony is that the honest users won't expend a lot of effort evading, while the scummier users will (and have a much easier time of it, since they've done it 100 times before). In this way anti-fraud filters sometimes act as pro-fraud filters: False positives kill honest use, and dishonest use finds a way.

meva 6y ago

The author infringed on Facebook name and possibly the logo too. Facebook sent a notice to Google. Google complied with the law and removed the extension. Yet the author blames Google for all this.

froh 6y ago
Thank you for this background detail! So actually instead of google, it was FB who with trademark protection legislation took down the app.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  It was Google who complied. They didn't have to (there was no jurisprudence); they chose to. Is Mozilla going to comply with a C&D for removal of Facebook Container for Firefox [1]? I think not. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24849452
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  An important question is, did Google ever tell the author who made the complaint so he could contact them or countersue? From the mails that are shown they don’t reveal anything apart from ‘a third party acting on behalf of Facebook’.
  - ucaetano 6y ago
    That would be giving legal advice, which Google (or any company) would avoid at all costs.
  - omega3 6y ago
    It's clearly stated in the email, it was company called Appdetex on behalf of Facebook. It even has a name of the person who submitted the claim.

siraben 6y ago

In the final update post[0] the author says There isn’t any option left to circumvent the Chrome Store. Starting with Chrome 53, extensions cannot be side-loaded anymore. Is it possible that Firefox will undergo such a restriction in the future? [0] https://graffino.com/web-development/after-my-post-went-viral-google-responded-theres-nothing-we-can-do https://graffino.com/web-development/after-my-post-went-vira...

jwitthuhn 6y ago
Firefox already has a similar restriction on Windows, and I think MacOS, but not Linux. On the normal version of firefox for those platforms you can't permanently sideload an extension, you need to reload it on each restart. The Developer Edition still lets you sideload addons normally, however.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  It's present on Linux too, and probably MacOS. Aside from Developer Edition there's an Unbranded Firefox you can get from Mozilla in English only which will allow it. Or you can compile it yourself with the MOZ_REQUIRE_SIGNING flag disabled, which is not too hard. On Arch Linux it's just download the firefox-nightly-hg AUR package and delete the MOZ_REQUIRE_SIGNING line, then makepkg -s. https://the-pwner224.neocities.org/compiling-firefox/index.html https://the-pwner224.neocities.org/compiling-firefox/index.h... This also provides a good security benefit - for extensions that aren't continually updated you can download them with the "Extension source viewer" extension and then change their ID in the manifest and manually sideload them to prevent them from auto updating and using invasive permissions - malicious buyouts by ad companies are not unheard of in both the Chrome and FF app stores. And also important, you can tweak the extension code as desired. For example the Old Reddit Redirect extension, which automatically switches reddit.com to old.reddit.com also changes new.reddit.com to the old one, so if you ever want to actually visit the new design then you have to disable the addon. There's no way to change this aside from editing the extension and then loading it unsigned.
- fwn 6y ago
  > On the normal version of firefox for those platforms you can't permanently sideload an extension ... Are you sure about that? I am using Firefox on Windows and I currently have no problem sideloading extensions. They stay enabled and even update automatically. Try, for example, installing this [1] bypass paywall extension via the "Download and install the latest version" link. Works flawless. ... or am I getting something wrong? [1] https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...

edem 6y ago

I'm just curious. Is AWS similar? I never heard an AWS horror story.

bsenftner 6y ago

How anyone can trust Google as a business partner is beyond me. Amazon too. Bunch of tech fools.

victorbstan 6y ago

This kind of matter needs support from government agencies. Unfortunately I don’t know that any government agencies that would be either willing or knowledgeable about what needs to be done to support users and software developers on online platforms. How helpless are developers and users when faced with what is essentially unregulated corporate behaviour.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

previous discussion from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048