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Google Disables Inline Installation For Chrome Extensions (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tightening-bolts dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Google today announced that Chrome will no longer support inline installation of extensions. New extensions lose inline installation starting today, existing extensions will lose the ability in three months, and in early December the inline install API will be removed from the browser with the release of Chrome 71. Critics have pointed out such moves make the Chrome Web Store a walled garden, while Google insists pushing users to the store ultimately protects them.

3 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Good, another reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    To push Chrome onto the vast majority of people. I can't even count the number of people who I've help with computer issues with odd, usually scammy/spammy/spyware/malware type extensions installed. 100% of the time they had no idea exactly what they were installing, they were essentially "drive by" installs because of this inline installation feature. 100% of the time, I uninstall those extensions and never get one single complaint about "hey this used to work, but now it doesn't"

    The root of the problem is less that a tiny fraction of computer users actually read any of the fucking dialog prompts they are shown. If there is a "yes" or "ok" button, they push that the vast majority of the time and only click "no" or "cancel" on rare occasion.

  2. So that's why Firefox... by urusan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So that's why Firefox has been becoming more and more Chrome-like, so it can be an alternative to Chrome after this change!

  3. Re:Another reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To their Credit, google has taken down a good 20 or 30 extensions I've reported as obvious garbage that violates their terms.

    And how did that "obvious garbage" get into the Chrome Store in the first place?

    Google, Apple, whatever. NONE of them can be arsed to scrutinize things that are submitted to their store.

    Google does not manually review every extension in the store. However, when an extension in the store is found to violate the rules, the removal from the store removes it for all users. That *dramatically* reduces the pay-off of tricking users into installing malware.