Google Removes Plugin Controls From Chrome, Reports Claim (ghacks.net)

An anonymous reader shares a Ghacks report: Google made a change in Chrome 57 that removes options from the browser to manage plugins such as Google Widevine, Adobe Flash, or the Chrome PDF Viewer. If you load chrome://plugins in Chrome 56 or earlier, a list of installed plugins is displayed to you. You can use it, among other things, to disable plugins that you don't require. While you can do the same for some plugins, Flash and PDF Viewer, using Chrome's Settings, the same is not possible for the DRM plugin Widevine, and any other plugin Google may add to Chrome in the future. Starting with Chrome 57, that option is no longer available. This means essentially that Chrome users won't be able to disable -- some -- plugins anymore, or even list the plugins that are installed in the web browser. Please note that this affects Google Chrome and Chromium.Further report on BetaNews.

Comments

This is how it starts

[Dust038]

I get on one hand it saves some headaches to the average end user who doesn't care what plugins are installed. But on the other hand...The only reason to hide plugins is because you're doing something you don't want us to see. A plugin whose code you don't want us to delve into and figure out what it actually is doing. Specifically Sending Private Data about History and censoring. We'll see how far this gets. Thanks Google.

Re:This is how it starts

[AmiMoJo]

From what I read they are looking to do away with plug-ins entirely, which may or may not be a good thing. Well, rather than removing them, they will be for internal use only, just like any other random DLL that a developer would choose to use in their code.

On the one hand it would probably be better if browsers didn't have plug-ins because they have security issues. Flash is famous for them, as is Adobe Reader. Let everything be implemented as an extension, pure Javascript and CSS that runs inside the browser's sandboxed interpreter, and is cross compatible with other browsers. Get rid of binary interfaces, OS and architecture dependence.

On the other hand, it means you can't disable features like the Widevine DRM bullshit even if you want to. At best all you can do is use an extension to block content in that format. And worst of all, there is no UI for finding and disabling stealth plug-ins that get installed by other apps.

Can't Remove Norton Spyware

[IonOtter]

Norton Spywa...err..."anti-virus" does this. It installs itself into Chrome and Firefox, without permission, and doesn't allow you to remove it.

You can disable it, but not remove it.