What people seem to be missing is that this isn't a complaint -- it's a call to form effectively a union:<p><i>Therefore, we are starting a group today for Chrome Extension developers to work together in check with CWS. It's not a technical support channel, nor a platform to get attention when CWS is unresponsive. It's a place for Chrome Extension developers to rally together and discuss improving the foundation we stand on (it also won't be hosted nor managed by Google).<p>United, we can have a stronger, common voice to:<p>Pressure Google Chrome to allow for 3rd party extension stores.
This would break down the walled garden of extensions, give extension developers a leveler playing field, and lower the risk of getting wiped out on CWS's whim.<p>2. Pressure CWS to be more fair and communicative with extension publishers.<p>Canned emails about rejections with only general policy information are “lose-lose” for publishers and CWS alike. Both parties waste time because of all the guesswork involved currently — especially when CWS makes a mistake.</i>
It doesn't matter if you're dealing with a store run by Apple or Google (or presumably anyone else): the stories are all the same.<p>Presumably because to make the economics work, review and approval are done by poorly trained contractors who don't have time to do a proper job and need to meet quotas. And with anything security related, there's an inherent bias toward not giving information on the <i>exact</i> violations because this can be used to get around the "spirit" of the law while sticking to its "letter" (very true for spam, questionable for app stores).<p>Serious question: is there any better model though? In the non-virtual world, similar standards for the public good are achieved through things like FDA regulations, health inspections, building codes and permits, etc.<p>Since it doesn't seem like there's any kind of elegant free-market or crowd-sourced solution here, what should the standards be for regulating apps and extensions? What kind of "due process" ought there be, or appeal, or whatever? Is there going to come a point when app stores get regulated by a democratically legislated government agency?
> Complaining on the internet should not be a support channel. Developers should not have to rely on the internet attention lottery.<p>None of the huge tech companies (Google/Apple/MS/Amazon/etc) have an easy (or in many cases <i>any</i>) way to contact human service representatives. This is intentional.<p>People have been complaining about this for more than a decade. Every week there are multiple writeups on the front page of HN about apps and extensions being killed off.<p>These corporations will never fix this. They have no incentive to do so. They don't care about individual users or small developers, and don't want to get involved in their "petty" issues.<p>Why? Because these have no impact on how much money they make.<p>The only way to fix this is through government regulation, but good luck with that.
Some previous discussions from a quick search to give some context to the frustration (sorry for the length, it's intended to be illustrative, I cut it at 10):<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229073" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229073</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186915" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186915</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21232438" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21232438</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23285466" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23285466</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12442048</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21990566" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21990566</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23168874</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233041</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587440" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587440</a><p>I'm not suggesting Google doesn't care, but...
This happened to an extension of mine as well, with 10k users. After repeatedly emailing them and getting back different snippets of the policy each time, I think there's some kind of AI or a very process-driven team that doesn't do any critical thinking handling each request.<p>I've ignored them now and the extension is still up so let's see what happens.<p>It's pretty clear that the walled garden approach will eventually stifle innovation, and building businesses or even apps for fun inside the frameworks of giant corporations is just not a good long term strategy.
Tangential but for those who are developing Chrome extensions, I've made a post about what to expect when submitting a update and how to avoid the manual review from CWS.<p>It can be found at <a href="https://getsnapfont.com/posts/avoiding-lengthy-review-times-for-chrome-webstore-submissions" rel="nofollow">https://getsnapfont.com/posts/avoiding-lengthy-review-times-...</a>
Google/Apple/MS app stores are pretty much a bastardization of software repositories found in the Linux world for years beforehand[1]. I doubt we'll see requirements to allow importing 3rd party repositories/signing keys at this point without some legislation.<p>Yes, I get some users don't always know what they're doing and it might be a big security risk, but just put up a big enough warning. People shouldn't be locked in to what software they're allowed to run on their own devices.<p>[1]: <a href="https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android-fragmentation/#package-management" rel="nofollow">https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android-fragmentation/#packag...</a>
This is the behavior of a monopolist, and Google needs to be broken up. Google and the various sub-entities get away with no customer support or completely inadequate support and they are a vital part of the Internet.<p>If there were competition, then there's no way with Google not being able to answer urgent customer support tickets. Because they are a monopoly, they can get away with saving money on customer support. All their subentities like Chrome, Gmail, etc are funded by their search and ads monopoly.<p>The only way this gets better is by breaking up Google, and forcing them to actually compete. If Chrome had to earn money the same way all the other companies did without having the hundreds of billions that Google makes, it would be a totally different product. They would need to earn their money the same way Firefox does, and would need to earn a portion of their money from things like extensions, and then they would need to compete with better customer support. But because they are a monopoly, they don't have to. It's basically a form of raising prices with no recourse, except what they do is deny services to competitors by having no support.<p>The only solution is to break Google apart, and force the parts to earn money the way all their competitors have to.
From the article:<p>> It's very possible for a 3rd party extension store to do a better job than Google at blocking malicious extensions.<p>I don't know that that is the case. Google clearly does a _terrible_ job on this, but they are at least theoretically financially motivated to do the job correctly. It's hard for me to imagine a 3rd party extension store being financially viable with correctly aligned financial motivations.
There are about 200000 chrome extensions, if 200 defected that is not a lot. It should be some minor things. Interestingly it is hard to make educated choice - does it contain opt-out spyware? what is the license? how much JS code it contains and why? is code readable or minified?<p>Compare with<p><a href="https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome" rel="nofollow">https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome</a><p><a href="https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories" rel="nofollow">https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories</a><p><a href="https://rubygems.org/gems/rails" rel="nofollow">https://rubygems.org/gems/rails</a><p><a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery" rel="nofollow">https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery</a>
Between this and Apple (profit/brand motive) and YouTube (incompetence/copyright bs), you have to be really careful building anything that relies on a platform you don't control. This is why RSS and similar tech is so important...
UGC web (including app stores) has to externalize dispute resolution or they lose all credibility with developers<p>'separation of powers' is a useful concept in the law, it's coming to the private sector (except with shorter arbitration timelines)
Ironically, after complaining that Chrome Web Store killed their extension without saying why, the author doesn’t answer why either beyond “it was a mistake.” Pray tell: mistakenly hitting “deny,” mistakenly interpreting rules in an unfavorable way, someone marked the submission as “in their queue by accident and then forgot about it? I get that it was a mistake but it makes a difference whether it was a mistake of clumsiness, carelessness, or malice covered with “it was a mistake!” when found out.
This happened to us by Google just now too. They deleted our app for a violation in version one of the app when we are on version 4 (over a year later) after 100 emails with basic replies, and inability to escalate we are at a loss. This is for Google Play store. Serves us right to try and build a business on Google/Android