Chrome extensions are meant to be clean and simple. Google is even making a move to ban obtrusive extensions, because sometimes these can harm your Chrome experience. There is another recent threat Google is dealing with, though. Companies have been acquiring extensions from developers in order to turn them into adware clients.
Why Google banned the extensions
Google has banned a couple of these extensions: Add to Feedly and Tweet this Page. These were once awesome extensions that helped users get the most out of the Chrome browser. They served a purpose. How did it all go downhill? Did the developers get greedy? Not at all!
Was it the developer’s fault? Not exactly!
In Add to Feedly’s case, the original developer was Amit Agarwal. Said developer was offered “a four digit” amount for his extension, which only took about an hour to code. Of course, he accepted and the transaction went smoothly. He regretted his decision when the new owner pushed an update to the extension, though.
The new owner turned his helpful extension into an ad-serving machine. These were not regular ads either, they worked in the background and replaced links on every website! Original links were replaced by affiliate links without anyone’s knowledge.
It’s very sad to see people trying to take advantage of good products. Google’s new policies will help make this all better, though. Soon we will not have to worry about all those spammy extensions.
