Google Starts Blocking Extensions Not In the Chrome Web Store

An anonymous reader writes "Google has begun blocking local Chrome extensions to protect Windows users. This means that as of today, extensions can be installed in Chrome for Windows only if they're hosted on the Chrome Web Store. Furthermore, Google says extensions that were previously installed 'may be automatically disabled and cannot be re-enabled or re-installed until they're hosted in the Chrome Web Store.' The company didn't specify what exactly qualifies the "may" clause, though we expect it may make exceptions for certain popular extensions for a limited time. Google is asking developers to reach out to it if they run into problems or if they 'think an extension was disabled incorrectly.'"

Comments

Welcome to your new walled garden

[TubeSteak]

It's only going to get worse as more and more "platforms" get tied to some company curated web store.
No thanks!

Re:Welcome to your new walled garden

[pitchpipe]

It's only going to get worse as more and more "platforms" get tied to some company curated web store.

HA! Pretty soon they'll have your desktop acting just like a smart phone: no privacy what-so-ever with every app knowing when you take a shit to when your SO is ovulating.

No fucking thanks indeed!

yeah whatever

[epyT-R]

The claim of protection is just the public plausible deniability excuse.. The real reason is to force people to use their stupid 'app store.'

Re:yeah whatever

[_xeno_]

Also to get rid of troublesome extensions like Adblock Plus. I seem to recall Google kicking Adblock Plus from the Google Play store, which while not the same thing as the Chrome Web Store, does seem a bit worrying.

Granted the reasoning used in that case (it "interfered with the operation of other apps") likely wouldn't apply to Chrome but it's the primary reason I want to be able to install extensions from non-Google "blessed" sources: I don't trust Google not to be evil.

Re:yeah whatever

[verylargeprime]

Nope. You're wrong.

Browser hijacking is a major problem within Chrome and other browsers, and side-loaded extensions are by far the most common vector for hijacking. Firefox and IE have the same problem. Short of making extension APIs totally useless for developers, this is the best approach anyone's come up with. Third-party anti-malware vendors are unreliable in this regard because it's very difficult (with good and often sufficiently gnarly legal reasons) to get them to classify any given extension as clearly being malware. This gives Google a necessary choke-point through which to filter unsavory extensions.

While you seem to believe this desire for control is driven by a nefarious, greedy plan to herd all the sheeple into a walled garden [diabolical laughter] with "plausible deniability," it's actually driven by a desire to not have users fucking hate Chrome because some dipshit is making millions of dollars injecting toolbars into browsers and sucking up volumes of sensitive and often personally identifiable information with no (or ill-begotten) user consent.

Though I don't see it mentioned in either of the links, it should be noted that this constraint only affects Windows stable (and I believe beta) channels. If you want to run Windows Chrome and you know you can handle yourself without being hijacked, just run dev channel. It's usually pretty stable.

Source: I'm a full-time Chrome developer at Google.

This is not new news.

[Virtucon]

For those of us on the Dev channel for Chrome hit this in February. It's definitely a fucked up decision by the Chrome team and has led to a lot of folks ripping out Chrome in favor of something else. The claim made by the devs is that it's safer if the extensions come out of their web store and would eliminate malicious activity from extensions. They obviously didn't want to fix the browser to alert the user when malicious extensions are installed or provide a sysadmin set of functions necessary to install necessary, safe extensions. Of course we all know it's another fucking walled garden take-over by Google. I've already recommended to clients that they don't use Chrome and have removed it from a little over 4000 systems thus far. Personally Google is fucking the user community on this one, so fuck Google.