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Reposting my experience from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27326268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27326268: As a dev of an extension with 10k use

Reposting my experience from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27326268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27326268: As a dev of an extension with 10k users I get 3-4 emails a month in my spam which ask me to monetize my extension by secretly changing its users' search engines. My extension is open-source and quite small, but if the change was sneaked in I think most of the users would not notice. I stick to using userscripts for the most part since you can easily check their downloaded source and disable updates. Example: Beth Anderson <beth@monetize-extensions.com> Mon 10:58 AM To: Mostly Spam <dev@x-ing.space> Hello I am Beth and I am offering monetization for browser extensions, with everything that is going on our team was extremely focused and productive in creating a way to earn revenue on extensions. We offer to change default search to Bing or Yahoo on your extension which can earn up to $800 a month per 5000 users. This is a premium product by invitation only and can easily be added to your chrome extensions. You are might curious to know if it is allowed? And I must say that this is completely allowed! Please reply to this email to discuss this further! Looking forward hearing from you! Beth Anderson Business Development Manager

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birktj 5y ago
There must be something more that they want as well? Seems very strange that Microsoft and Yahoo would be interested in paying big bucks to lure people to their search engines through some dodgy extensions?
- xingyzt 5y ago
  Yeah, when I first shared it in a developer discord server I joked that Microsoft was operating a black market Bing-conversion program. Seems too shady even for Microsoft though. I guess they want me to inject ads/trackers into the results, but I don't see how it's easier with these search engines?
- pestaa 5y ago
  I think it is just to illustrate the scope of the change, not that their customers are either of those two.
dang 5y ago
Please don't copy-paste comments on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste%20comments&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you want to refer to what you posted someplace else that's great, but a link is the tool for that job. In rare cases you could always ask us at hn@ycombinator.com to move your comment to a different place, if it's much more relevant there.

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birktj 5y ago

There must be something more that they want as well? Seems very strange that Microsoft and Yahoo would be interested in paying big bucks to lure people to their search engines through some dodgy extensions?

xingyzt 5y ago
Yeah, when I first shared it in a developer discord server I joked that Microsoft was operating a black market Bing-conversion program. Seems too shady even for Microsoft though. I guess they want me to inject ads/trackers into the results, but I don't see how it's easier with these search engines?
pestaa 5y ago
I think it is just to illustrate the scope of the change, not that their customers are either of those two.

dang 5y ago

Please don't copy-paste comments on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste%20comments&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you want to refer to what you posted someplace else that's great, but a link is the tool for that job. In rare cases you could always ask us at hn@ycombinator.com to move your comment to a different place, if it's much more relevant there.