[HN Gopher] Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is...
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Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down
Author : roadbeats
Score : 646 points
Date : 2020-05-23 19:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kodfabrik.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kodfabrik.com)
| trashburger wrote:
| Another victim of the Chrome Extension AI. Seems like the PR move
| of last week was nothing beyond that, a PR move. I expect them to
| backpedal again like they did with Pushbullet, but it's too late
| now.
| softbankhater wrote:
| I hope Google will go bankrupt
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Kozmos, can someone suggest an alternative / replacement?
| nyreed wrote:
| Do you remember when browser extensions could be installed from a
| developer's own website and didn't require any kind of
| dysfunctional 'gatekeeping'?
|
| I know there are benefits to having someone vet browser
| extensions, but it seems a shame that they remove the self-
| distribution option completely when their moderation is so
| ineffectual.
| vezycash wrote:
| There's this quote about how the dictator are benevolent in the
| beginning in their appeals to people's safety needs.
|
| Slowly but surely, the people handover their rights and are
| shocked by the power the dictator "suddenly has."
|
| When the chrome team was tightening their grips on chrome,
| people here hailed the move because some windows programs like
| anti-viruses, download managers and adware sideloaded
| extensions.
| dictationer wrote:
| I like this.
|
| We do keep giving power to some system because they "protect
| us" (Google and Apple in 2010) but there's always a chance
| that they'll stop caring once they don't need your support
| anymore.
|
| Microsoft is also trying to buy our support by being
| benevolent, I wonder how long and if that will last.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Hostile is a better word for their moderation than ineffectual.
| crummy wrote:
| Not saying it wasn't a better time, but I do remember the era
| of half a dozen IE toolbars installed on folks' computers doing
| God knows what.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Wouldn't a better solution be a pop-up that says "your
| browser has bad plug-ins. May I uninstall them for you?"
| bad_user wrote:
| Yes I do remember.
|
| Then extensions started being a spyware / malware delivery
| mechanism, with popular ones being bought and turned overnight.
| Coupled with browser plugins shoved down on the user's throat
| by various Windows software, this made Firefox unusable, at
| least on Windows.
|
| It's why back in 2010 I started recommending Chrome to family,
| because Chrome installations kept being clean. It's why we
| can't have nice things.
| retpirato wrote:
| It wouldn't be the first time developers where "trolled" with
| take down notices. The same thing just happened to pushbullet.
| Fortunately they were given notice & resolved it & will stay on
| the store. At least for the time being anyway. We'll see if it
| happens again. Is this a really common problem?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Keeps me wondering, can we still install extensions outside their
| store? Or did they plug the last escape hatch and fucked it all
| up?
| weaksauce wrote:
| I would be extremely surprised if they remove that feature all
| together because extension development would not work at all.
| Guzba wrote:
| Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode
| in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your
| business if you try to distribute an extension on your website
| this way though.
| sb8244 wrote:
| Can you go more into what they do if you try to bypass their
| distribution mechanism? Is there any existing posts sharing
| experience? I'm curious as this has always been my backup
| plan if Google takes this action against my extensions.
| yunyu wrote:
| It's fine on MacOS (albeit a bit clunky), and sideloaded
| upgrades end up creating two copies of the extension so
| you'll have to ship your own autoupdater. On Windows, it's
| a no-go as Chrome will display a scary warning every time
| you start the browser:
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-
| develop...
| sb8244 wrote:
| Yikes. I use macos but definitely ship up windows.
| Appreciate you sharing this.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Firefox isn't an option?
| detaro wrote:
| You sadly vastly limit your user base if you don't support
| Chrome. Doesn't seem unlikely that a product wouldn't work out
| on Firefox only.
| vezycash wrote:
| Developers evangelized Android and Chrome in their early days -
| created the monsters. People making Chrome only sites are feeding
| the monster.
|
| Instead of Kozmos shutting down, the best revenge would making a
| firefox extension and getting their users to switch.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Agreed, why are they shutting down instead of doing that?
| livueta wrote:
| I generally try to avoid bitching about Firefox design
| decisions in Chrome threads, but possibly because of
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409675 - the
| original WebExtensions breaking change removed the ability
| for newtab-style extensions to do a lot of things their XPI
| counterparts could, in particular focusing on the address bar
| after opening a new tab. That bug went WONTFIX with no
| suggestions for an alternative interface, basically telling
| extension devs to come up with their own proposal for how to
| implement it if they want that bit of the API back. I'm not
| familiar enough with the extension in question to say whether
| any of those specific issues would have affected it (and from
| the article it sounds like time was a bigger pressure) but
| developing newtab-style extensions for Firefox is definitely
| harder than it should be.
|
| While I generally agree with the reasons behind moving away
| from XPI extensions, it's been really disappointing to see
| Firefox not be as focused as I'd hoped they'd be on restoring
| lost extension functionality. That's especially important in
| the context of Google fuckery like the OP.
| arkh wrote:
| Not sure there's a lot of Firefox users paying for
| extensions. especially one which seem to just be a sexier
| bookmark search.
| superkuh wrote:
| This wouldn't be a problem if browsers weren't walled gardens
| that are controlled by corporations instead of the users
| running them. Yes there are security issues with ignorant users
| doing things. But sometimes the fix causes a problem worse than
| the original.
|
| Firefox and Chrome both don't let users install any add-on
| without their permission. Switching to Firefox ecosystem just
| means the leash is longer (and the protection is fake because
| of their automated signing portal).
| pedrocx486 wrote:
| Or even Edge. Their new Chromium based builds are Chrome
| compatible and have their own store.
| sb8244 wrote:
| The great thing here is that it is literally 100% compatible
| with Chrome extensions.
|
| I have been working on an extension that uses Chrome's
| Debugger API, lots of tab / network related APIs, and
| DevTools. I spun it up on Edge the other day and...it just
| worked. Everything worked.
|
| I can't say the same for firefox. They do a good job bringing
| over some extension APIs, but I find it severely lacking for
| my use case.
| calpaterson wrote:
| I have a side-project that is partially a browser extension. I
| use a single codebase for both Firefox and Chrome.
|
| Even with my trivial side-project and a grand total of two
| releases so far, Google ar itrarily rejected one release for
| being "spammy" when there was literally a 5 line diff between it
| and the previous release. Thankfully just finding the depreciated
| dashboard and uploading an icon (the "new dashboard" doesn't have
| this feature yet apparently) got it through after resubmitting
| it.
|
| It feels like they've set themselves as gatekeepers of Chrome
| extensions (Windows users can only install from the "store") but
| they aren't actually interested in doing the job even though you
| pay an admin fee for the privilege of developing a free extension
| for their browser.
| kyleee wrote:
| Your best course of action is to drop chrome support, and make
| your extension as good as possible and make a point of
| marketing that it's firefox only. Most won't do it due to
| worrying about market share, but alas IMO it's the best option
| available
| calpaterson wrote:
| I use Firefox personally and originally made the thing for
| myself. I added Chrome support because Chrome is much more
| popular (not far from ten times more popular these days :()
| and people I would like to use this, eg friends and family,
| mostly use Chrome.
|
| I couldn't ask them to switch browsers for my little side
| project. I have to co-operate with Google's bureaucracy. For
| what it's worth, so far it seems like Mozilla is not exactly
| streets ahead, but at least they didn't charge me and they
| seem to be fairer and more helpful to extension developers
| (they have a "self-distribution" mode with relaxed oversight
| I used while in private alpha, and their tools and docs are
| better).
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I think it would be perfectly reasonable to promote Firefox
| to your friends and family as "simply the better choice"
| irrespective of your own interests.
|
| When Chrome was better, I suggested friends and family use
| Chrome. Now I think most people would benefit from using
| Firefox as their primary driver.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| Are you including the change cost here, which will be
| many times higher for most of the population vs. HN? Even
| if I thought that Firefox was a better choice, I'd
| recommend to my friends and family to keep using whatever
| they are using unless they have to switch for some
| reason.
| vezycash wrote:
| >make a point of marketing that it's firefox only.
|
| This is a great but only a temporary solution. Firefox is
| taking jabs at extensions not on its recommended list with
| slightly scary warnings.
|
| Firefox as a privacy focused browser should give users the
| ability to limit permission or sites extension can run on -
| including click to run option.
|
| Without this, they'll soon go the way of chrome.
|
| Heck Chrome started locking down extensions when they started
| catering courting enterprises. And they included the ability
| to make extensions uninstallable.
|
| Bad actors took advantage of it, forcing chrome to tighten
| things further until extensions could only be installed from
| the store.
| rusabd wrote:
| Eventually, somebody will write bots to deal with this robotic
| bureaucracy and it will be matter of how much licenses and CPU
| power you have to negotiate a better deal. Essentially, it will
| be like rich people nowadays solve issues between themselves
| using lawers.
| znpy wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible to build a casa against Google
| and start a legal litigation on this matters.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > Imagine having the same conversation, and starting it over and
| over from scratch every a few weeks
|
| Seems like after doing this 2 or 3 times, I'd be making plans for
| a pivot or change to my business model.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I have to wonder how PayPal are feeling about their $4 billion
| acquisition of Honey now, which requests permission to read/write
| on all websites and exists solely as a browser extension. They're
| on multiple browsers, but I doubt either Mozilla or Apple will be
| particularly interested to protect what's presumably now a
| massive PayPal data mining operation.
| eternalny1 wrote:
| Good question, Amazon apparently is also curious:
|
| Amazon suspiciously says browser extension Honey is a security
| risk, now that PayPal owns it
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21059083/amazon-honey-brow...
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| PayPal is part of the Silicon Valley circle-jerk, so they will
| get a warning or a pass from Google and Apple just like
| Facebook did with Onavo.
| lethologica wrote:
| I would think lawyers at PayPal would have a little more 'pull'
| than a single developer though.
| reidacdc wrote:
| I see these stories from time to time, and I can't help but
| wonder if there's an opportunity for some kind of third-party
| support for Google.
|
| Like, if you were a former Googler or someone who'd been through
| their customer-support wringer, and you had some contacts, you
| could set yourself up as a consultant for small-scale Google
| account holders who run into this. Charge a fee for access to
| your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell "Google insurance", a
| group of small devs could pool some money to pay for access to
| Google support when the hammer randomly falls on one of them.
|
| This idea brought to you by my experience with various government
| bureaucracies, which are nominally publicly accessible, but, due
| to under-staffing and high demand for services, are more
| productively approached through the right kind of lawyer.
| hartator wrote:
| That will be great but that's just corruption.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe
| even sell "Google insurance"_
|
| There are organisations that already work like this in many
| countries of the world. That's usually what we want to get away
| from.
| paultopia wrote:
| Apparently this exists for Amazon sellers already. See:
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| The worst outcome of the iPhone is the general move of
| programmers from people who write software for a platform the
| user fully controls to people who write software for a platform
| controlled by a company that the user borrows a device from.
| whathappenedto wrote:
| Yeah, everyone's known that platform dependence is risky, and
| every decade or so we "learn our lesson" but then forget the
| moment the next cool platform comes along if it has enough
| users.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| its not so much forgotten as aggressively dismissed and
| mocked as tin foil hattery.
| saltking112 wrote:
| It makes me wonder when behaviors like this becomes an anti-trust
| issue.
| scottporad wrote:
| I'm sorry that you had that experience. Maybe enough up votes
| will get Google's attention.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Maybe with enough exposure it will get people to move away from
| digital sharecropping where anyone even can accidentally take
| away your livelihood.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There's only one developer advocate on the Chrome extension
| team; hopefully they see this!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23198629
| metalliqaz wrote:
| google dgaf
|
| There are only a handful of extensions that are deal breakers
| (the lack of which would send users to other browsers). uBlock
| Origin, for example. All the others can fuck right off.
| jtbayly wrote:
| lol. If you think uBlock Origin going away will make people
| switch browsers, I think you've got another think coming. We
| will soon see...
|
| 1. When (not "if") Google kills UBO 2. How Chrome's market
| share doesn't drop
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Google have already given notice that they are killing
| uBlock Origin. Manifest v3 will eliminate the ability to
| have your own adblocker. In its place will be the ability
| for an extensions to provide an interface to a built in
| functionality that is deliberately gimped.
|
| Adblock addons will be drastically limited in
| functionality, must bundle the block list with the addon,
| can't update the list outside of updating the addon, are
| limited to a fraction of the size of existing block lists.
|
| This will end the arms race in favor of ads vs blockers by
| ensuring that ad blockers can't win while pretending its
| not ending adblocking.
| shklnrj wrote:
| I finally stopped using chrome and thanks to Brave, I can use
| almost all the extensions that I still am used to, since all of
| them are compatible with Brave.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Brave is based on Chromium
| luckylion wrote:
| But it's not chrome, hence not controlled by Google, and
| not bound by their policies regarding what extensions you
| may or may not install.
| xkapastel wrote:
| In theory. In practice, Manifest v3 (the changes to
| adblockers) will be implemented at the C++ level, meaning
| you'd need to fork Chromium in order to avoid it. I would
| be surprised if Brave even had the engineering power to
| do that. Microsoft perhaps, but I doubt they actually
| will.
| SanchoPanda wrote:
| I think the parents comment's argument is that since it's
| based on chromium it also can eventually be forced to
| acquiesce, so any chromium-based browser is just a stop
| gap solution.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Chromium is Open Source, Google can t force Brave or MS
| or anyone else to do anything they don't want to. Google
| can make their life difficult, leading to a fork, but
| they can't force anything beyond that.
|
| With all that said- I still prefer Firefox and think it
| is the best choice right now for the Web.
| devit wrote:
| Especially since it seems that this extension is for paid users,
| you can tell them to use Firefox instead (or use Chromium and
| sideload the extension).
| tdeck wrote:
| > Google (Robot): We'll take your extension down
|
| Me: Hey, this must be a mistake
|
| > Google (Robot): No mistake, review these policies, your
| extension violates one of them
|
| Me: It does not violate any of them, this is a mistake!
|
| > Google (Finally human): Oh, sorry, a mistake.
|
| Obviously someone just needs to create a robot that automatically
| replies to the takedown notices and disputes them, thus closing
| the loop!
| huffmsa wrote:
| Donotpay probably would if you passed the idea
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I had the same reaction. But then the individual
| programmer/founder won't risk their robot messing this up,
| while for google it's a numbers game.
|
| Also, someone would have to program that bot and can you even
| imagine how dead inside you'd feel if that was your life?
| thanksforfish wrote:
| Using AI to suggest a reply or to use human approval seems
| like a low risk approach.
|
| Would you feel dead inside if your tool helped developers
| keep their projects online? Sounds rewarding to fight the big
| guy and keep cool projects online.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Step 3 doesn't happen usually. If it did, no one would be
| upset.
| dade_ wrote:
| Somehow I expect that using a bot against their bot violates
| user TOS part #63836370 section YQ, and they will immediately
| lock your accounts, associated business accounts, delete the
| data and offer zero recourse.
| erichocean wrote:
| And laugh about it, because they think it's funny.
| xg15 wrote:
| Old and busted: Google unexpectedly cancelling their products.
|
| New hotness: Google unexpectedly cancelling _other peoples '_
| products.
| o10449366 wrote:
| Google must be an awesome place to work as an engineer because
| apparently you just generally don't have to worry about
| deprecating your products/services or interacting with your
| customers. Amazon is notorious for their oncall and
| stubbornness is sunsetting services. Everyone I know that works
| there hates the burden that comes with being "customer
| obsessed." I never hear any complaints like that from the
| people I know at Google.
| Awelton wrote:
| Maybe someday everyone will realize that google isn't a company
| that provides services to users, it's a data theft company. They
| don't really care about bugs or frustrations because they aren't
| in the business of providing things to you. You are not their
| customer.
|
| The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an
| email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider.
| They are an advertising company. They use their products to steal
| your information. They aren't meant to help the user, because the
| user is not their customer. I'm sure you will get a real human
| employee if you are interested in buying ads from them.
|
| Contrary to popular belief there are many companies that provide
| software besides google. Use them if you want a provider that
| might care about your problems. "It's not exactly the same as
| google ____" is not a valid excuse for not giving it an honest
| try.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think all of this is moot, because several big companies that
| have a business model arising from direct transactions with end
| users ... are also routinely losing sight of their obligation
| to end users. Did anybody want Windows 8 tablet UI on their
| desktop? Did anybody say, you know, this Macbook is great, but
| it'd be _even better_ if it no longer launched my 32-bit
| software, and please make it phone home for everything I do?
|
| I think this story is better told more simply, that when a
| company gets big it becomes arrogant, bad at social awareness
| and serving _anybody_. I 'm sure you can find advertisers or
| would-be beneficiaries of what you call "data theft" that are
| fed up with Google breaking their stuff too.
| michaelterryio wrote:
| This reminds me of when sports fans say things like, those odds
| are meaningless, they're just set by bookies to get action.
|
| True from a naively pedantic POV, but also ignores that betting
| odds happen to end up efficient also. Like saying shopkeeps set
| prices to drum up business and aren't subject to the principles
| of supply and demand.
|
| Google is an advertising company, but as part of its strategic
| goals it develops a high quality email client that beat out
| competitors on its own. I bet you the Gmail team is full of
| brilliant people who don't give a shit about advertising and
| just want to make an awesome email client and spend night and
| day thinking about just that.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| This may be true, but follow the money. The facts of their
| business plan are a simple matter of public record. Users are
| the product and their customers are advertisers. As a
| company, they exist to service advertisers. Everything else
| is just noise. Sure, they have some incredibly talented
| engineers trying to create good stuff. None of that matters.
| The focus of the company remains the same. As potential
| users, we must choose to support that business model or not.
|
| As long as someone understands the Faustian bargain and
| enters into it willingly, no problem. The difficulty is that
| it is unlikely most users really understand the details of
| the deal they are entering. "Hey, cool, free email." That's
| about the end of the thought process for most users. Google's
| approach is brilliant in its simplicity. "Free" stuff.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I bet you the Gmail team is full of brilliant people who
| don't give a shit about advertising
|
| I mean they better give a shit about advertising because it's
| what lets them have a job at Google.
| komali2 wrote:
| It doesn't matter what brilliant ground level people want if
| they don't get to do anything about it because of pressure
| from management.
|
| I have seen this first-hand. I bet you have too. A brilliant
| user friendly idea stays at the bottom of the product log, as
| middle and upper management product asks get piled on top of
| it, pushing it deeper and deeper.
|
| Sure, I _guess_ you could donate the small amount of free
| time you get to your employer and do it after work, but I can
| 't think of anything more demotivating than working for free
| for a company with revenue in the hundreds of millions.
| jaifraic wrote:
| This is a bit of an exaggeration, but: I bet you the arms
| industry is full of brilliant people as well, but developing
| systems that are designed to kill people is still wrong.
| hartator wrote:
| If only the experience was good on the ads buying side with
| Google, it is not.
|
| They lost their way but keep riding their initial wave.
| paulcole wrote:
| > They use their products to steal your information.
|
| They aren't stealing from me. I get to watch YouTube videos,
| store my files in Drive, and use gmail -- all things that I
| like quite a lot. Yes there are alternatives to gmail and
| Drive, none of which are good enough for the hassle of
| switching. There is no YouTube alternative.
| brankoB wrote:
| A lot of people aren't aware of the data collection. In those
| cases I think calling it stealing is fair.
| paulcole wrote:
| Why exactly? You're not getting a better deal on milk if
| you understand the economics and logistics of the dairy
| industry.
| brankoB wrote:
| Sure but people understand the basic transaction (give
| money -> get milk). If on the other hand they gave you
| free milk but tracked your milk usage without telling
| you, I'd argue that's a non-consensual transaction and
| falls under stealing (roughly).
| paulcole wrote:
| What about if someone gives you a free lunch but doesn't
| tell you that they're going to film you eating? Is that
| stealing?
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Yup, take a look at their financial statements. I haven't done
| it in the last few years, but for most of their existence
| advertising revenue has been >95% of their total revenue.
|
| Everything else is a loss-leader or a rounding error.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren 't
| an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation
| provider._
|
| This is all well and good, but they cornered the market for
| email, webapp, cloud storage and online translation products
| (and most importantly smartphones and web browsers). So until
| there is a viable alternative _that the average person knows
| about_ , this will not change.
| dannyw wrote:
| Generally speaking, the cornered the market through building
| good products that beat the competition. Do you remember free
| email providers prior to gmail? ISPs who you maintained a
| paying customer relationship with offered worse quotas and
| outdated web mails.
| HappyJoy wrote:
| I remember Hotmail
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember postmaster.co.uk and hotmail.com, they were
| around way before Gmail, and were less invasive, but I got
| my own domain and I serve my own emails since 2000 so I got
| that covered. I like my emails like I like my newspaper:
| NOT to read them together with someone else. I do know that
| emails are clear text etc but it's not fun that I get an
| email about XYZ and then every website I visit shows me ads
| about XYZ.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Yes, I remember plenty of free providers (as well as
| quality paid ones, and ISP ones, for example GMX and Ilse),
| including with IMAP/POP3, TLS/SSL support, anti spam
| features, anti virus features etc. Gmail was unique in
| three ways: it had a huge quota (for that time), and it
| offered a slick web interface. The other way Gmail was
| unique was the invite. If you gotta get invited to become
| part of the (secret) club, that makes it more special.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This is why I have slowly de-googled the last year. Finally
| switched away from Gmail after 15 years. I've removed pretty
| much all Google from my life except some searching at times.
| fulyscentedking wrote:
| Google is like the Matrix. To Google, the users are the
| batteries. It needs to keep sucking data out of the users to
| stay alive.
| vosper wrote:
| > they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online
| translation provider.
|
| But they are: all of these are paid services Google offers.
| Presumably if you pay you get a different level/kind of
| support?
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Lol. You get different support yes, but it's equally as
| shitty if not more so.
|
| I've been an enterprise customer of Googles services. When
| you have a problem simply finding the link, to the obscure
| dashboard login, to post an issue may take hours. I'm not
| even joking. Like Google is built to prevent you from using
| it discover useful support pages with contact information.
| "Account Executives" otherwise known as sales people, provide
| zero support after the contract is signed and I mean zero.
|
| Once you write in, you wait, and hope. It's kind of like
| filing a radar with Apple but a bit shittier because you have
| still idiotic, naive, hope you'll get a reply or help.
|
| If you ever do get a reply it's likely a bot. If you ever
| have to disagree chances are it won't be seen or
| acknowledged. Google is by far the worst service provider on
| the planet if you ever have an issue.
| Awelton wrote:
| The point of that statement was not to say that they don't
| provide those services at all, the point was that providing
| those services aren't their "thing". There is not a paid tier
| of any google product that will stop them from spying on you.
| Any payment you make is just to subsidize their spying so
| they get your data at little or no cost to themselves. If you
| are paying for google services you are not only giving them
| your data, you are paying for the privilege.
| roadbeats wrote:
| Developers who publish Chrome Extensions also pay for them. I
| paid $5 initial fee twice for publishing Kozmos extension. In
| return, I can't even see a contact information to reach out
| about a bad review made.
| soneil wrote:
| The last numbers I saw (2016-ish) put Advertising at 86% of
| Google's revenue (Or perhaps Alphabet's revenue? I'll admit
| that all that stuck in my head was this 86.)
|
| If those numbers are still anywhere near close, Google is an
| advertising company with some interesting side hustles. Just
| because Harley Davidson sell t-shirts, doesn't mean you'd
| describe them as anything other than a motorcycle company.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| A hilariously apt comparison - after looking up Harley's
| breakdown, it _looks_ like merch was ~10.5% of the revenue
| brought in by motorcycles (not parts /maintenance) in 2015.
|
| Granted, I'm not well-versed in looking at corporate
| financials, but the basic breakdown shown here [1] isn't
| terribly complex
|
| [1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harley-
| davidson-rep...
| begemotz wrote:
| are you suggesting that if you paid, then they would not
| trade in your data?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I'd go further and suggest that some of those services
| don't trade in your data even at the free tier.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I guess you might be right. For example, here is a semi-
| official answer on how Google makes money out of Google
| Docs:
|
| https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-Docs-and-Drive-
| generate-an...
|
| It's not unlikely that in this case they use the more
| traditional business model of having the free tier do the
| marketing for the premium option.
| [deleted]
| manigandham wrote:
| Google _is_ a provider of all those things. Advertising is the
| biggest revenue line and supports free access (to products that
| are still best in class) but they also sell paid versions to
| both consumers and businesses.
|
| Bureaucracy and customer support problems with large companies
| is not a new or unique to Google.
| aboringusername wrote:
| Thing is, the value proposition proposed by "the cloud",
| whomever that may be (MS/Google/Apple et al), is quite the
| temptation.
|
| Seriously, I am slowly and surely de-googling, such as storing
| all data locally (if I need offsite, I use encrypted backups).
| My calendar now uses caldav on a raspberry pi, my home network
| uses ethernet for fast data flow to a portable drive and I am
| using a web browser for many applications such as email; I use
| noscript and nextdns to selectively control my browsing
| experience. SSH is powering _everything_ , including being able
| to access the device from _any_ client connected to the network
| and if I wanted, from the internet as well (which can be quite
| useful, needs to be done sensibly however).
|
| It's possible, but it _does_ require effort, staying power
| (when installing a python package doesn 't quite work because
| python 2/3 still...sigh) and is, quite simply, not something
| the average home user cares about.
|
| Do they care an enforcement agent can access your documents via
| a warrant? or your metadata? or access your 'social circle' or
| profile you? Honestly, not really. But my threat model is that
| Google can and will use their AI army against you, and if you
| are unfortunate enough to get caught by them, there's little
| regards to you as an individual.
|
| I can't risk my data being in a service with such little regard
| to humans, it's not acceptable and frankly, hosting everything
| myself is safer, more rewarding from a learning experience
| (such as how linux _works_ and certain design decisions that
| are both good /bad and can be frustrating).
|
| go de-google, it's a worthwhile venture.
|
| [P.S: in a previous life I was vastly pro google. I used
| location history for years, google pay, play store, play games,
| stored youtube history and the whole works. Thanks to Snowden
| and forums like reddit/hackernews, I learnt that this was
| foolish. Giving up my data, for free, in return for little
| value back (why give them my financial information, for what?
| Google Pay is no different to my contactless card and that goes
| to bank directly). Cutting all these data flows was refreshing,
| and is part of the plan to delete or make my account dormant
| altogether. I am vastly more pro-privacy and take strict
| measures to reduce my digital footprint, which is entirely
| possible but requires additional effort, where the temptation
| of letting the "nice guy" handle all the work is always there.
| Paying in cash is still a thing and leaves less of a trace to
| 'you' as a person than digital]
| fossuser wrote:
| The only main Google service I still used was Gmail (and
| occasionally search when DDG doesn't return something
| immediately useful). I'd seen comments about Fastmail over
| the years, but moving seemed like it would be a hassle.
|
| With more at home pandemic time I decided to just do it and
| have been super impressed. The Fastmail docs are _really_
| good, setting up DNS to use my custom domain had explicit
| steps and pictures for my specific provider (gandi.net) along
| with a ton of others.
|
| They have super easy to setup import from Gmail to get things
| over initially and to keep things coming as you convert
| accounts.
|
| They have really good instructions for all IMAP clients and
| it's been painless to set those up.
|
| I did have to spend a day going through every account in
| 1Password and changing emails, but the super simple aliases
| you can setup in Fastmail make this great. I have a bunch of
| different ones for different types of sites (some very
| specific, some general catch-alls) on my domain which I can
| now blacklist in the future if I need to.
|
| The main issue is that you realize a lot of sites are just
| terrible, many don't let you change your email at all and
| require contacting support. Some don't even let you change
| after contacting support (postmates just says to 'create a
| new account under your new email and abandon the old one').
|
| In general though I'm happy I did it and the Fastmail site
| has been pretty impressive. I like paying for software I
| think is high quality and valuable (where the business and
| customer have aligned incentives).
| tzs wrote:
| There's a fairly general way to do mail import that works
| fine with Fastmail, and might be more flexible if you would
| like to combine the import with reorganization your mail
| folders. This assumes both providers support IMAP.
|
| 1. Set up both providers on an IMAP client that supports
| multiple simultaneous accounts.
|
| 2. Copy messages from the old provider to the new by simply
| selecting them in the old provider's folders in your IMAP
| client and dragging them to wherever you want them in the
| new provider's folders.
|
| As long as you pick an IMAP client that supports copying
| between IMAP servers, this should do it. I used either
| Apple Mail or Outlook for this. I don't remember which.
| komali2 wrote:
| I went through a similar process during quarantine, but for
| bluehost.
|
| I found the process of changing emails over meant I also
| was able to make Pass entries for them (another way I'm
| taking control of my data), and at the same time delete my
| account for websites I don't need anymore. It's been very
| cleansing.
| fossuser wrote:
| What is a pass entry and what do you use it for?
|
| Another thing I should mention is I wanted to try hey.com
| since it looks like they're doing some interesting things
| (alerting users to tracking pixels to push back on
| clients like superhuman, whitelisting incoming mail,
| etc.) but they make it hard to get an invite so I gave up
| trying and paid for fastmail instead.
| hectormalot wrote:
| Not GP, but I'm assuming https://www.passwordstore.org/.
| Pass is a CLI password manager using Git and GPG to store
| and manage your passwords. I use it and sync passwords
| across devices through a git repo on self-hosted Gitea.
| Works really well if you're comfortable with the CLI.
|
| Also switched away from Google to Fastmail with my own
| domain about a year ago. Happy with the move, although
| Gmail still sees some activity because I never took the
| effort of migrating historic mails and all non-primary
| accounts.
| komali2 wrote:
| Thank you, this is what I meant.
| fossuser wrote:
| Makes sense - thanks, I thought it was some domain level
| thing.
| komali2 wrote:
| Re: Tracking pixels - disable images by default in your
| email client. I get emails now from people like "we've
| noticed you haven't been opening our emails..."
| oAlbe wrote:
| What is a truly private European based alternative to
| Fastmail? Other than Proton ail.
| jaifraic wrote:
| I've started to switch all my email stuff to
| https://uberspace.de/en/
|
| It's a kind of shared hosting with full ssh (non-root)
| access. They offer a pre-installed Roundcube Webmailer,
| but you can host your own one as well.
|
| I run my own Roundcube with my own Domain and configured
| a maildrop instance to sort incoming mails.
|
| So far it works as a charm. The hoster is based in
| Germany and I trust them to be privacy-aware.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Hey, i recently switched to Fastmail too! It's been
| surprisingly painless, even with importing mail, calendars
| and what not. Like you mention, the most time consuming
| part has been going through my accounts to update the email
| address to the new one.
| achillesheels wrote:
| My wake up call came in May 2018 when I was starting a
| cannabis dispensary YouTube channel and they decided to
| terminate all content creators. But this also included the
| gmail account. Completely. Flipping the switch off just like
| that made me realize I'm an idiot for using Gmail as my
| "central" email address (I've navigated all my critical
| emails offline and now use my own email server.)
| arkitaip wrote:
| Not wanting to rely on Google - especially Gmail - as my
| central identity provider is why I switched to Fastmail.
| Sure it costs and the migration took a couple of days but
| it's been worth it.
| p2detar wrote:
| > I'm sure you will get a real human employee if you are
| interested in buying ads from them.
|
| That's a fact. Speaking from personal experience, Google
| Ads/Admob seem to be the only services where human support
| exists.
| tzs wrote:
| We had a problem at work with receipts and support request
| replies to all our customers on a certain popular free email
| provider that also had a big ad business (but was _not_
| Google or Microsoft...) getting filtered out as spam. We 'd
| contact them, and they'd say they would fix it, and in a few
| days the mail would start going through--for maybe a month
| then it would go back to getting blocked as spam.
|
| Word of this got to our guy who handled ad buying. He called
| our ad rep with them, and asked pointedly "why the fuck am I
| spending $X thousand dollars a month to buy ads from you to
| get new customers, and then you are blocking those new
| customers from getting their receipts and support
| replies???".
|
| The ad rep put our guy on hold for a minute, then came back
| and said he had their head of IT on conference. He asked the
| head of IT that question. The head of IT put us all on hold
| for a couple minutes, then came back with a couple engineers
| who worked on their email system on the line, and told them
| to whitelist us so that nothing of ours could be blocked as
| spam, and promised it would be done in something like half an
| hour.
|
| It was, and we never had a problem there again.
| foobar_ wrote:
| This seems like a cool service. There are few bookmark managers
| implementing full text search. Move to safari or firefox and
| notify the users ?
| antjanus wrote:
| Wish I had known about this product. This seems like a really
| awesome bookmarking service -- better than most I've seen. :(
|
| This is also so terribly common. I had a Twitter account get
| suspended for 2 months...with no explanation. I appealed it but
| it still took 2 months. What if that had been my main source of
| revenue? They restored the account without much explanation.
|
| We really need _real_ people to make decisions like this. Oh it's
| not scaleable? Then maybe it's not a product you can sustain.
| pictur wrote:
| I had the same things 3 years ago. The stupidest user experience
| I have seen is the process of publishing the google chrome
| extension.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| The worst part of the so called modern Google experience for me
| is that somehow mediocrity seems to be accepted as good enough.
| Quality human work has been replaced by software that is far from
| perfect. The worst part: others try to emulate that, "because
| Google is doing that." But Google is a Behemoth that can afford
| not caring. Moreover, since they know they can't be search
| leaders forever, they really can't afford not diversifying and
| not experimenting with all possible services, trying to see which
| one sticks and which could be monetized. So I expect it's going
| to be much worse in the future.
| irrational wrote:
| Google excels at closing down projects. With all the recent
| stories I've been reading about problems with the extensions
| team, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Chrome is losing
| extensions. No extensions - no ad blockers - more money for
| Google.
| omnifischer wrote:
| It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch
| questions like:
|
| 1. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2. No
| repeal process
|
| At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and
| understand mentality of other people.
|
| It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble
| but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us?
|
| What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates account
| without human intervention? Please do not blame it on Project
| Managers.
|
| You are human - so is some one that was affected by your code.
|
| Amen
| gdulli wrote:
| I just created a Google Voice account for the first time. A few
| hours later I asked 3 different friends to send me a text
| message to see if it worked. I didn't get any of them or any
| warning that it takes time for the number to activate.
|
| I tried again the next day, same results. That was 4-5 days
| ago, and still nothing. I'm abandoning Google Voice because I
| assume Google has abandoned it. It's not like there's anyone I
| can ask.
|
| This is just an inconvenience to me. I can't imagine what it's
| like to have a service I actually rely on and then lose it.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Google is a proverbial a jack of all trades, master of none.
|
| If you need to depend of them for a specific service, don't.
| Go with an actual business that cares and have the focus on
| what's important, and more importantly a customer service
| that listens.
|
| I went with a dedicated VoIP provider, and the service has
| been excellent
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Can you suggest an alternative to Voice? I need SMS and
| voice, and prefer data being optional (Voice can forward to
| a dumbphone, or even a landline). Happy to pay, just
| haven't found an obvious direct competitor.
| techbubble wrote:
| I like the Unlisted app https://www.unlistedapp.com I got
| it a few years ago and haven't had any problems. I think
| it might be iOS only. There are plenty of other burner
| phone number apps which work on both Android and iOS.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Perhaps I'm missing your actual requirements (based on
| what's been suggested below), but I've been using voip.ms
| for years now. They support voice and SMS, and even my
| bank's SMS "2FA" works with them now. They don't support
| MMS, however (though you may have meant that when you
| said SMS).
|
| SMS is available as a FLOSS app (I use the F-Droid
| voip.ms app), or through another portal - able to be
| sent/received through email, another number, or a web
| interface.
|
| I honestly have only good things to say about them
| (despite being a consumer of their seemingly B2B
| product). As a disclaimer, I don't work for them, have no
| affiliation with them, and made a point of not using any
| kind of referral link.
| justinc8687 wrote:
| Dialpad is useful for this. They're one of the few
| alternatives I've found that allows for routing calls
| over POTS.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Gaslighting is the worst.
|
| It's getting more common, too. Just the other day I found out
| that posting links in a youtube comment makes the comment
| invisible to everyone else. In hindsight, disallowing links
| is almost certainly a good policy and it's easy to understand
| and appreciate why it was put in place, but why the
| gaslighting? Just pop up a box explaining that links aren't
| allowed. The gaslighting isn't going to fool spammers for
| long enough to be a meaningful deterrent, but it _is_ going
| to trip up legitimate users enough to meaningfully degrade
| their experience.
|
| Time to visit my bitwarden and port another account off gmail
| (my late new-years resolution is to port an account off gmail
| every time I get myself worked up about something google did
| -- funnel the useless frustration into something worthwhile.)
| Hello71 wrote:
| gaslighting doesn't mean hiding.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Hiding = post is invisible to you and everyone else
|
| Gaslighting = post is visible to you, and unbeknownst to
| you, invisible to everyone else
| benibela wrote:
| Happens on other platforms, too
|
| I had a Firefox plugin that would tweet all my bookmarks.
| Years later I noticed all the tweets were hidden from
| search
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I think the term is shadow banning
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Shadow banning, hellbanning, slowbanning, error banning
| -- it all falls under the umbrella of gaslighting in my
| book.
| crystaln wrote:
| Shadow banning is a form of gaslighting because users
| expect their comments to be seen and responded to, however
| they are invisible. This is confusing and an abusive
| practice.
|
| I have had hn accounts shadowbanned without explanation or
| opportunity for appeal (I did try and was ignored) and
| largely stopped participating here because of that.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It's completely fair to stop participating as a result.
|
| That said, I'm sympathetic to the idea that in small
| communities admin time is at a premium and gaslighting,
| even if it's occasionally abused, is a force-multiplier
| that can make the difference between a community having
| enough moderation to survive vs spinning off into
| toxicity and turning into a ghost town.
|
| What I object to is that it seems to increasingly be used
| as a "best practice," to be applied universally without
| weighing pros and cons, rather than as a shitty reality
| to be applied minimally. For instance, in the case of
| youtube, we can place a very low upper bound on the value
| they're getting out of this tool, because it's being used
| to enforce an automated blanket policy that everyone
| already knows about (certainly everyone intent on link
| spamming, in any case). HN's shadowbanning is going to be
| good or evil on a per-instance basis, which makes it
| difficult for me to judge, while youtube's shadowbanning
| (as it relates to enforcing obvious automated blanket
| policies) cannot be good and is therefore much easier to
| judge.
| fossuser wrote:
| Voice was a really frustrating product for me because it was
| so clearly years ahead of its time and also ignored by Google
| for so long that everyone else caught up and passed them.
|
| In 2010 I was able to have one number ring multiple phones,
| automatic transcription of voicemail, text people from a web
| browser (!), switch between network providers without having
| to deal with number porting, it was great.
|
| What killed it for me was that MMS was silently dropped, no
| images, but worse group SMS was handled by MMS so if people
| added you to group chats you just wouldn't get any of the
| messages and they would have no indication that you weren't
| getting them.
|
| This went unsolved for years.
|
| Eventually iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook - basically
| everyone else took this market. Then Google started some
| anemic work on it again, along the way making and killing a
| bunch of other chat products that all sucked in different
| ways.
|
| Along with google plus and cloud, this is probably one of
| their biggest strategic failures.
| luckylion wrote:
| > What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates
| account without human intervention? Please do not blame it on
| Project Managers.
|
| One who gets paid half a million a year to not question the
| policies and their consequences and just does what they are
| told?
| lowiqengineer wrote:
| It's pretty apparent that they think people who don't work
| for google are vastly inferior human beings. It honestly runs
| counter to their "social justice" facade.
| monadic2 wrote:
| I really think this is unreasonable. Even at google there
| are different subcultures, including many with an anti-
| corporate streak. Furthermore I'm not going to blame an
| employee for not sticking out their neck for client
| businesses who also don't give a shit about them. This
| isn't a problem of individual providence.
|
| Google needs a damn union just to get some reason in the
| building.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Google needs a damn union just to get some reason in
| the building.
|
| I'm pretty pro-union in general but I don't follow your
| reasoning. Cops are unionized, and when they murder
| innocent civilians in broad daylight, the unions are
| right behind to pay for their legal defense. Unions don't
| bring reason to a workforce; they merely represent that
| workforce.
| microcolonel wrote:
| > _Google needs a damn union just to get some reason in
| the building._
|
| The problem is not mainly with how Google treats their
| employees (though there's definitely something wrong
| there), but with how they treat their customers.
| lowiqengineer wrote:
| Its true - they believe themselves to be so damn smart
| they behave with rank condescension towards everyone else
| as the "top 1% of intelligence".
| fortran77 wrote:
| Nobody who get a Google paycheck has a sincere "anti-
| corporate" streak.
| cft wrote:
| An anecdote: I was running my bootstraped company with 5
| employees when in 2013 I suddenly started getting Google
| recruiting emails about once every 4 days. They wanted me
| for a "role" of a SRE, probably because I asked stack
| overflow sysadmin questions. I never responded.
| dialamac wrote:
| > including many with an anti-corporate streak.
|
| So basically the worst form of slacktivist hypocrites.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The problem is that regardless of the number of programmers
| that refuse to implement the whole thing, you only need _one_
| to ever say yes to get it.
|
| So every bad idea eventually gets implemented.
| microcolonel wrote:
| The odd thing is that they can't even make a cost argument for
| this. If they charged a cost recovery fee for human redress of
| these sorts of issues, it would not cost them anything, and
| that's assuming they don't lose money from improper automated
| enforcement, which they almost certainly do.
|
| It's pure incompetence.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why would I want to keep paying google for their shitty AI's
| mistakes?
| syshum wrote:
| >>What kind of programmers wrote such code that terminates
|
| The Human mind has an infinite capacity to justify any manner
| of things as "just doing my job" or "just following orders"
|
| This has been seen in all industry, in all types of roles and
| at all times in history
|
| There is nothing more dangerous than a group of people "just
| doing their jobs"
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Also hubris. Hubris is a hell of a drug.
| whathappenedto wrote:
| So it's easy to think with a human customer service agent, all
| will be well. But then I think about all the customer service
| calls I've made or emails I've sent, and I almost wish that
| they did not exist so I don't get my hopes up and waste my
| time. Most customer service is worse than a computerized
| flowchart.
|
| And even if they do understand your situation, and have
| authenticated you, and aren't just reading a script, then most
| of the time they can't offer you anything else besides what's
| possible on the website anyways. Sometimes we just like having
| someone to complain to.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Sure thing, but I still prefer to talking to the worst human,
| than the best KI avaible.
|
| Also, I bet no one think all will be well, without KI, but it
| will be better dealing with incompetent, overworked and
| underpaid call workers, than dealing with a "smart" KI, with
| you cannot talk at all. In the first case there is at least
| the hope, that someone escalates the problem to someone with
| more knowledge who can finally solve your problem.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's not my experience of call centres. While they are
| generally reading from a script and often they have no more
| information than you do, they crucially have the ability to
| recognise when things aren't working right and escalate your
| issue.
|
| With Google's bot approach that can never happen. The only
| way to escalate issues is to be famous and write a blog post
| or tweet about it.
| hw wrote:
| Not surprising, given the amount of so called "engineers" they
| hire, some of whom don't really have a background in CS, just
| studied for the interviews, or came from a coding school. It's
| astonishing how many fresh code bootcamp grads that companies
| like Google pick up and pay 6 figures for.
| [deleted]
| hkyeti wrote:
| As someone who's Google ad account was mysteriously suspended for
| no given reason (even before a single ad was run) and am now up
| to 4 days waiting with no reply nor phone number I can call, I
| hear you..
| carapace wrote:
| I'm keeping an eye on cookiengineer's "Stealth" proxy (
| https://github.com/cookiengineer/stealth ). It reminds me of the
| old (and still kickin') Proxomitron (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron )
|
| If you MITM your own browser you can do whatever you want without
| an extension (that's almost a hostage to browser makers.)
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the
| point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used
| Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was
| broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and
| in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever
| fixing it.
|
| That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me
| how little Google cares about anyone (users or the people who
| make content for their platforms) yet we still use their
| products. These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not
| only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also
| because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut
| down eventually.
|
| What can we do about this?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > What can we do about this?
|
| Purchase software from other providers. With like, cash.
| brownbat wrote:
| > When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a
| feature that was broken for YEARS
|
| Not sure if this is yours, but mine was that it would often
| swap out my tracks for radio edits, even though I uploaded the
| original. I'm an adult, I bought this music, I don't need the
| kids' version. There's a built in feature you can use, "fix
| incorrect match," that would fix this only about half the time.
|
| Oh right, it also capped the max size of playlists to 1000
| songs for some reason.
|
| Now it sounds like YouTube Music won't even let me listen while
| switching to another app, like a workout app, and won't let you
| turn off the screen without the music going out. Hard to
| believe.
|
| Looking around, I'll be moving to musicolet I guess. Sounds
| like AIMP and BlackPlayer get good reviews too, but I really
| love the idea of an app that actually tries to limit the
| permissions it requests from you.
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/best-music-players-android-...
| kodablah wrote:
| > What can we do about this?
|
| There is a much harsher solution that I'm not even sure I
| advocate yet: stigmatize employment there.
|
| At-will employment somewhere when we can easily go elsewhere
| means that, while we don't necessarily condone all that our
| company does, we in general support/accept the company and its
| approach. Therefore, absent hardships, we must assume Google
| employees generally support Google actions as a whole (even if
| not this one). If others disapprove of Google's actions as a
| whole, they are allowed to disapprove of those that work there.
|
| In my opinion, the best you can do is disapprove of working
| there (including passing opinionated judgment, albeit politely,
| on those that do work there). Maybe you take such character
| judgments in your personal or hiring decisions. Having said
| that, I don't agree with it as I generally support Google's
| actions/presence as a whole, but the further their average
| lowers, the more myself and others won't.
| on_and_off wrote:
| Some of the kindest people I know work at Google.
|
| The truth is that it is become an enormous company and
| somebody working e.g. on the internals of Compose code has no
| power over how Chrome handles extensions.
|
| I despise Google more and more as a company but that's not
| going to affect them.
|
| In the areas where Google has some real alternatives, switch
| to these.
| zionic wrote:
| I saw this in my top-5 school. Internships at google were
| laughed at pretty hard. All the best guys wanted SpaceX or
| Tesla. Apple was also considered good but not great for your
| resume and you couldn't talk about what you worked on much.
| lykr0n wrote:
| Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common
| on HackerNews.
| adventured wrote:
| > Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems
| common on HackerNews.
|
| I've had the exact opposite observation here. There are few
| places on the Internet I see Google get more consistently
| browbeaten and held to account for its mistakes and abuses
| than on HN. This has been the case for at least the past six
| or eight years or more. Threads on Google here are very
| rarely laudatory; they typically make the front page because
| of bad things.
|
| HN comments tilt toward overwhelmingly disliking Goliath and
| favoring David. You see this in most Intel v AMD threads from
| the past decade. You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy
| or merged with Oracle. Intel having an inferior product now
| doesn't explain the visceral response, it's something deeper
| psychologically, it's a revulsion of big tech broadly. It's
| mostly just a matter of rooting for the underdog and against
| big tech. The same thing is common re Amazon and Facebook
| here (increasingly Apple as well, which has lost a lot of its
| favor on HN). Microsoft is slightly in favor by contrast,
| they took a very long big tech lashing previously and people
| like a comeback story (their open source olive branches help
| a lot).
|
| Pretty typical, forever repeating psychology. Underdogs,
| comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until
| after you fall.
| bsder wrote:
| > You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged
| with Oracle.
|
| To be fair, Intel engaged in some _really_ evil practices
| to prevent AMD from gaining market share for a very long
| time. And, unlike Microsoft 's slap on the wrist, Intel
| never really got punished _at all_ for it.
|
| Yeah, Intel isn't as bad as Oracle simply because they
| don't have Larry Ellison. However, Darth Vader isn't
| magically good simply because he's not The Emperor.
| kilburn wrote:
| > Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like
| you again until after you fall.
|
| Yeah, the fact that once "the davids" of the past became
| today's goliaths changed their behavior from (at least
| pretending to) caring about being social net-positive
| forces to being purely business machines has nothing to do
| with it.
|
| For instance, Google's code of lost this paragraph two
| years ago [1]:
|
| > "Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to
| how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more
| than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased
| access to information, focusing on their needs and giving
| them the best products and services that we can. But it's
| also about doing the right thing more generally - following
| the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with
| courtesy and respect.
|
| It may not matter to you but it does for some others. I'm
| one of them.
|
| [1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-
| of-do...
| llampx wrote:
| According to a lot of devs and CTOs I've met, Google and
| Apple can't do anything wrong while Microsoft can't do
| anything right.
| bsder wrote:
| Actually, I regularly have to go through any APIs we use
| from Google and yell at the developers who use them.
|
| I can't risk having a corporate rollout/demo/pilot fail
| because some developer made the Googlebot pissy and got
| everything they're associated with banned.
|
| I trust Microsoft _way_ more than Google at this point.
| That says something.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only
| for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also
| because if I grow to like one of their products it will just
| shut down eventually.
|
| > What can we do about this?
|
| I think you've already got it; don't use Google products.
| Ideally, pay for alternatives.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I honestly don't think this does anything besides give me a
| small satisfaction. I can't think of a time when voting with
| your wallet actually worked.
| js4ever wrote:
| This story explain perfectly why I will never create anything
| relying on Google tech or services again... Too many horrors
| story... And I have 2 projects killed by their dumb AI and
| without any possibility to talk to a human Google is Skynet!
| vzaliva wrote:
| I had a small harmless extension which does not access ANY user
| information and completely client-side. I received cryptic
| takedown notice and was not able to convince them it is not in
| violation of their policies. They never specify what policy
| exactly you violate, just keep referring to the whole document.
| Finally I decided it is not worth it and took down my extension.
| annadane wrote:
| Hi there Google employees that occasionally come here to comment!
|
| THIS IS WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES.
|
| This among MANY other reasons is why people are pissed off with
| you.
|
| When are you going to fix your toxic corporate culture?
| mariz-io wrote:
| I feel you, keep being reject for a simple extension with generic
| explanation and no guidance on how to fix it(if there is anything
| to fix). Decided to share on a github repo and let users
| installed manually following a video tutorial... really bad
| experience and communication.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Is Firefox any better in this respect? I am seriously considering
| switching.
| droitbutch wrote:
| Probably, but browser extension developers need to go where the
| users are. Google has leverage and knows it.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| If it bothers you enough "to switch", that implies you've not
| been writing extensions using universal web extension code, in
| which case.... what? Why not? The only massive difference is
| the namespace ("broswer" vs. "chrome"), which is trivially
| shimmed, and promises vs. callbacks, which is also easily made
| universal.
|
| But having said that, if you're considering switching you
| probably also want to consider telling your paid customers how
| to install your extension themselves, rather than sending them
| over to Google's extension "store".
| reustle wrote:
| Check out privacy friendly alternatives to Google products on
| https://nomoregoogle.com/
| sneak wrote:
| This isn't a Google issue. This is a platforms-that-can-enable-
| censorship issue.
|
| Google is just an instance of the class. All of the instances of
| the class are subject to this problem. Fixing Google's policies
| will not eliminate this danger.
|
| Censorship platforms that do not permit the user an escape hatch
| (iOS App Store, I'm looking at you) are ultimately able to decide
| what we see, what we read, what we are allowed to think. They can
| disappear entire bodies of work without even a notification.
|
| Do not use censorship platforms.
| mcrittenden wrote:
| I maintain a paid Chrome extension
| (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom-k...)
| and I've had a very similar experience with the frustrating
| repeat automated shutdown emails, except that so far my extension
| hasn't been actually shut down. I'm just waiting for the day that
| it happens at this point. I'm surprised it has not happened
| before now, since my extension requires a lot of permissions to
| do its job.
|
| In my case, I make a nice little side income from that extension
| so it would be a noticeable income hit. But I'm not sure of
| anything I can really do to prevent it from being shut down if
| and when Google's robots decide the time has come.
| droitbutch wrote:
| An interesting extension but I am a bit surprised - it seems
| the target users are developers, which generally have the
| wherewithal to download the repo and install themselves - how
| does this result in a "noticeable income"?
|
| Sorry, not trying to be obtuse, just curious from a side-income
| perspective.
| hmert wrote:
| Google never invest/pay attention enough on support.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Another sad story of how a person's passion is quashed by big-
| corp monopoly.
|
| When you're on the receiving end, the actions of Google are
| indistinguishable from those of traditional bureaucracies except
| that instead of training people to follow scripts, they have bots
| that take care of things automatically.
|
| Unfortunately for us humans, Google's model of automating the
| disregard seems sustainable and profitable.
| wolfgke wrote:
| Next time on HN:
|
| Postmortem and lesson learned: Don't make yourself dependent on
| BIG_COMPANY when building a product
| Guzba wrote:
| This comment is trite. No Android app, no iPhone app, no Google
| search listing, no Amazon product page, no Stream/Epic store
| listing, no browser extensions, no cloud servers. Can you rely
| on an internet provider or should you lay your own fiber? What
| technology product are you going to make that relies on
| nothing? HN deserves better comments imo.
| matz1 wrote:
| Do not relay on one solution, diversify. Have a backup plan.
| Assume that whatever it is you rely on has possibility to
| dissappear anytime for any reason.
| wolfgke wrote:
| Every stock market investor knows that you should always
| diversify your risk. So never make yourself deoendent on the
| whims of some single or few BIG_COMPANIES.
|
| Specifically:
|
| > no Stream/Epic store listing
|
| There exist lots of stores: Epic, Steam, GOG, Humble Store,
| itch, ... So diversify the risks of being dependent on the
| whims of one or few of them.
|
| > no cloud servers
|
| Write your server-side applications in a way that does not
| depend too much on the specific details of the cloud
| implementation of a specific cloud provider so that you can
| rather easily switch to another cloud provider if necessary.
| greatgib wrote:
| Like with appstores, Big Co are taking too much power over our
| free will.
|
| Let's hope that antitrust agencies will finally investigate them
| on this subject!
| dorkinspace wrote:
| It seems like trying to build a business on any Google property
| is simply a bad idea. Or, if you do, have an alternative ready
| for when Google shuts down the product or cancels your account.
| speeder wrote:
| My "RL" business, that has nothing to do with tech, relies
| heavily on Google ads, whenever we lessen the spending on them,
| our income drop proportionally, I am very worried about what
| will happen when they yank our account due to a mistake, but I
| am yet to figure out an alternative, other ad providers made no
| difference...
| nihil75 wrote:
| I made such a mistake - hosted a static page on AWS S3 with a
| redirect. Google didn't like that. AdWords account blocked,
| no one to talk to but the bots!
| aboringusername wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of automated
| decision making going on. In [1], the ICO offers guidance around
| what the GDPR says in regards to this subject.
|
| What I don't understand is why the GDPR doesn't enforce the
| following:
|
| 1: Clear and concise information about the action being taken,
| and clear identification this was done using automation and did
| not involve any human oversight.
|
| 2: A process the user can invoke to request human intervention,
| and a confirmation email that a human will review the decision
| that was made within 30 days
|
| 3: Public statistics and transparency - any decision that was
| made that did not involve a human must be published, with stats
| on % of decisions made, number of cases flagged to human
| reviewers, and the success/failure rates (for example, number of
| cases resulting in an overturned AI decision by a human).
|
| This could also be beneficial in other sectors too, like
| automated credit decisions and insurance policies, to publish
| statistics and data to afford transparency and identify possible
| biases. It should also be a requirement in law to preserve any
| code or algorithms should they need to be audited, including an
| AI system to be preserved "in time", so that the 2017 version can
| be audited in 2020 if an investigation is launched for example.
|
| Right now, it's a complete free for all, too many edge cases and
| ways to game the system if you can figure its loopholes, and no
| requirement in law to provide a fair basis for users to appeal to
| a human without causing a PR shitstorm.
|
| This early adoption of AI is quite bad, and I suspect we'll see
| such developments in the long term future as it matures.
|
| [1]: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
| 5h wrote:
| Literally the first sentence of the GDPR:
|
| This Regulation lays down rules relating to the protection of
| _natural persons_ with regard to the processing of personal
| data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data.
|
| No snark, this situation sucks, but after dealing with GDPR for
| a while it's not well understood in tech societies
| aboringusername wrote:
| I think what's needed is case studies or case law. A ruling
| in a court that becomes a "model" as to which the GDPR is
| applied.
|
| People look at historic court cases which defines future
| societal behavior (like acceptance of Gay marriage in some
| places).
|
| It'll take time but get there eventually, and then we'll see
| changes based on that.
| tomaszs wrote:
| I like that the author called automated answer system of Google
| Chrome extensions what it is. And it is bullying indeed. It is
| yet another raport about misbehaviour of this company torwards
| developers. Why in earth we should accept corporation bullying
| developers when we set up policies in communities for everyone to
| feel safe? There is no place for double standards. I hope the
| author will support the free internet by providing services
| outside the closed ecosystem of Google
| Guzba wrote:
| There are people inside Google that must have thought this review
| and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have
| gotten built otherwise.
|
| Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into
| production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response
| inside Google?
|
| I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm
| just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world
| consequences of choices like this into who is empowered to make
| choices going forward.
| downerending wrote:
| One thing I've noticed working for a variety of companies is
| that highly profitable companies generally do _not_ have
| consequences for even fairly dramatic failures, both in terms
| of how they treat customers and how they treat employees. They
| simply have too much money, so there 's little need to do so.
|
| In a tiny company, a large failure can easily be the end of the
| company, so they're far more motivated to care about things
| like customer happiness, etc.
| sneak wrote:
| Relevant: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/gap/
|
| This story is about infra, but it applies just as much for
| product.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I wonder if increasing the store publish fee from $5 to something
| closer to $50 would enable better customer support.
| geza wrote:
| I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has
| been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own
| open-source extension HabitLab ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ )
| that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be
| removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions
| even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and
| every update I try to submit is rejected by their system after
| about 3-4 days) and I feel utterly helpless. It's only used by
| about 12,000 users so unlike PushBullet I probably don't have the
| visibility to get a human to intervene, so will be going the way
| of Kozmos most likely.
| hanklazard wrote:
| I'm really sorry to hear that--it looks like a useful extension
| and I'm sure you've put a lot of hard work into it.
|
| Naive question to you and to other extension developers here
| ... how does Firefox do when it comes to this issue? Is it just
| that the market share is so much lower that it's not worth
| developing for FF? I ask this as a happy FF user on mac, linux,
| ios.
| geza wrote:
| I tried porting the extension over to Firefox when Firefox
| switched to WebExtensions, and at the time there were tons of
| incompatibilities, mostly with Firefox's Shadow DOM
| implementation (HabitLab is a huge and complicated codebase,
| porting it is non-trivial - I had an issue tracking it at
| https://github.com/habitlab/habitlab/issues/137 ). I'm sure
| it's a valid option for smaller extensions however. At the
| moment I'm trying to get it accepted on the Edge store, as
| Edge is much more compatible with Chrome extensions than
| Firefox.
| hanklazard wrote:
| I wonder if others are thinking the same re: Edge and
| whether this will eventually lead to chrome losing users to
| Edge as useful extensions find a home there.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Is there a workaround for users? Old builds of Chromium?
| geza wrote:
| It works fine with the current versions of Chrome (and
| Chromium-based browsers like Edge), you'll just need to
| sideload it once it gets removed from the Chrome store.
| Alternatively, if/when I manage to get it accepted into the
| Edge store, you could switch to Edge.
| lonelappde wrote:
| I thought Google banned sideloading unapproved extensions
| on Windows and Mac.
|
| https://developer.chrome.com/apps/external_extensions
| kristofferR wrote:
| Well, you can enable developer mode, extract the
| extension, add it manually, re-enable developer mode
| every time Chrome starts, and manually update to each new
| version...
| geza wrote:
| I meant distribution as a zip file that you can load in
| developer mode, like the installation instructions for
| Bypass Paywall ( https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-
| paywalls-chrome ). It's not a very user friendly
| installation process but it still works. But yes, CRX-
| based sideloading no longer works on Chrome.
| zb1plus wrote:
| That's very sad to hear, I've been an avid user of HabitLab.
| Thank you so much for developing this tool! I wonder if you've
| ever considered doing a Chromium fork with the HabitLab
| interventions integrated deeper into the browser? I think
| there's a lot of potential and interest for a productivity-
| oriented browser that helps stay focused and develop good time
| management skills.
| geza wrote:
| A Chromium fork is going to be a pain to maintain. My
| contingency plan if it gets removed from the Chrome store is
| to try to get it accepted into the Edge and Opera stores, and
| ask users to switch to either Edge or Opera (and provide
| sideloading instructions for those who want to stick to
| Chrome).
| monadic2 wrote:
| I imagine it must be painful to tie your agency to a large
| corporate entity that clearly doesn't give a shit about you.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| All hail our indifferent corporate overlords.
| dade_ wrote:
| Digital needs a human touch. Google never understood this, and I
| would never trust them with anything important. Too many
| nightmares with their robots. Generally, I don't care, dumped
| Google and Chrome, but the Nest thermostat hurt.
| leonardteo wrote:
| I feel you...
|
| We had similar issues with the Google Play store for the
| ArtStation App (https://magazine.artstation.com/2018/12/happened-
| artstation-...), it simply got taken down and appealing
| continually got rejected. It was only after the issue got picked
| up as the top story on Hacker News and other sites that exposed
| the dysfunctional nature of their moderation that finally Google
| subtly changed their policy so that if the content is primarily
| "artistic" it's allowed, but the catch is that only they deem
| what is appropriate and not...
|
| We recently updated our Chrome extension also and it just seems
| to me that not a whole lot of effort is going into the Chrome Web
| Store, at least on the developer side where you update the
| extensions.
| Nightshaxx wrote:
| That's kinda NSFW.....might be helpful next time if you
| indicated it as such.
| errantspark wrote:
| Really?? Feels like I'm living in 17th century New England
| here.
| pricechild wrote:
| I can confirm it's NSF(my)W in 21st century Old England.
| macintux wrote:
| There are no shortage of workplaces where viewing nudity in
| your web browser isn't considered professional.
| That's...probably 99% of U.S. companies.
| lol636363 wrote:
| As a web developer, i am tired of JavaScript and whole web
| ecosystem and want try desktop or mobile apps. But then I read
| stuff like this and just cannot imagine building a business
| where AI or one single outsourced moderator can upend my
| business.
|
| I hate regulations but I am of opnion that if you are a
| platform that other people use to make living then you should
| be regulated. Don't be platform of you cannot provide processes
| to handle appeals or able to pay massive damages in case of
| false positives.
|
| For now, I will stick with webdev.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh I knew Apple applied the prude-policy to their store. I did
| not realize Google did too. Interesting.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Yet for some reason does not flag the Reddit, Instagram, and
| Twitch app with similar or worse content. I wonder if their
| algorithm has special exceptions built in to ignore apps
| specifically by name or by "downloads > X".
| m00dy wrote:
| This is same the guy who owns the leftpad package on npm :)
| deadwing0 wrote:
| Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the moderation
| (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the Chrome Store
| because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds of people to do
| it manually? I know it's easy to say "Google doesn't care about
| you," and generally it as a company may not care, but they also
| are not in the business of putting us out of business.
|
| It feels like to me that they have just become a sprawling mass
| of interconnected yet disjointed divisions but without any real
| customer service department that can handle the amount of
| requests or situations like in OP. I am not on their side in any
| way, but Occam's razor and all, it just seems the most likely
| explanation to me is that they are just too cheap to pay people
| to handle the volume of customer issues they have? Or would it
| not be economically feasible? What do y'all think?
|
| [Edited to divide into two paragraphs for slightly easier
| reading]
| Majromax wrote:
| > Is it possible that Google writes code to automate the
| moderation (for lack of better word) of the extensions in the
| Chrome Store because they are trying to avoid paying hundreds
| of people to do it manually?
|
| Undoubtedly, for the Chrome Store as well as all of their other
| properties.
|
| Ultimately, Google's business model is about earning fractions
| of a cent per view/download and making it up in volume. Their
| profit margin depends on relentless cost optimization, and
| humans are inevitably the most expensive part of their
| support/maintenance systems.
|
| Google undoubtedly doesn't _want_ to put extension writers out
| of business, but if they adjust their procedures to give cases
| like this real human attention then they will undoubtedly allow
| a few dozen spammers /scammers to also receive human attention.
|
| (Note: I present the above without judgement. If I were to add
| my judgement, I'd say that I don't think that this state of
| affairs is a good thing, and in the long run we may need to
| reconsider whether algorithmic promotion of content without
| human oversight is viable.)
| detaro wrote:
| I'm still a bit surprised they're not offering a paid support
| tier. That'd still suck for non-commercial extensions, but at
| least help with the "extension filtering is killing our
| business!" cases.
| riquito wrote:
| I'm afraid is more complicated than that. If they were to
| add non-mandatory paid support, any time someone were at
| risk of losing its extension would feel/believe it's an
| extortion scheme to force him to pay for support (whether
| that's true or not).
| city41 wrote:
| I can't see how a healthy browser extension ecosystem would
| help Google. Without Google getting any real value out of it,
| it makes total sense they do a poor job managing it.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| If people increasingly head back to FF or other alternates?
| deadwing0 wrote:
| I somewhat agree, yet wouldn't a healthy extension ecosystem
| (excellent term, btw) attract more users to Chrome and in
| turn keep users more entwined in the larger Google ecosystem?
| I guess there is a cost/benefit analysis done. They put just
| enough effort into it to get the return or results they want.
| The little guys like OP (who arguably make the best content
| because it's open source and not full of trackers or other
| junk) just get stepped on along the way.
| city41 wrote:
| I don't know at all, but if I had to guess extension usage
| is pretty low. I'm not sure the average user really sees
| browser extensions as something they need. They aren't as
| obvious as say mobile apps. On the flip side, extensions
| like Honey seem to suggest at least enough people use them
| to be of some worth.
| [deleted]
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You'd need to hire more than "hundreds", especially since
| people get mad about false positives and false negatives. How
| long do you think it takes a reverse engineer to completely and
| thoroughly vet a browser extension or mobile app? A day maybe
| if you are doing it quickly and longer if you are doing it
| thoroughly.
|
| Now do that for every app and extension. And repeat it for
| every single version that is ever uploaded.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > they also are not in the business of putting us out of
| business
|
| Actually, the way they've expanded their range of products I'd
| wager they've put quite a few people out of business. It's
| especially bad if your business happens to not be one of the
| ones they acquihire, but one of their competitors, as evidenced
| by a handful of antitrust lawsuits.
| amirathi wrote:
| It's clear that Google don't want to hire humans and run
| customer support centers. According to reports, this has bit
| them in GCP adoption as well.
|
| That's fine but at least have a human review before taking
| disastrous actions like taking down extensions, lockdown Gmail
| accounts. If you can't afford even that at least have an appeal
| process where human would review the case. If you can't make
| the economics work even for that maybe just don't run the app
| store.
| renewiltord wrote:
| GCP does have support engineers who work with you on things.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| It does? Haven't used it yet and have no near future plans
| to change that. As long as there's a single account, the
| support of each part of Google matters, because it could
| cause your account to be closed.
| victorhooi wrote:
| GCP most certainly does have support engineers available!
|
| https://cloud.google.com/support
|
| There's a variety of different tiers to suit your
| required level of support, and some products (e.g. G
| Suite) come with free in-built support.
|
| (I work as part of Google Cloud support organisation).
| bartread wrote:
| Maybe they're still angry with him about leftpad.</joke>
|
| Yes, it really is the same guy:
| https://kodfabrik.com/journal/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules.
| And, joking aside it would be wise to bear in mind that we're
| reading only one side of the story here. As with leftpad, there's
| another side to this.
|
| With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you"
| (https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-
| breakin...), and then wrought global havoc on npm users. Now he's
| claiming the Chrome Extension Team "continuously troll
| developers", and is pulling down something he's created... again.
|
| I only have two data points, so the behaviour here is a
| coincidence rather than a pattern, but I will guarantee you
| whatever you think of Google there is more to this than meets the
| eye.
|
| I'm not without sympathy for the author, but neither am I about
| to uncritically take his side.
| brundolf wrote:
| On the other hand we've seen this kind of behavior from Google
| time and again, even on its flagship platforms like Android and
| YouTube. The Chrome Extensions store is likely the bottom of
| the barrel when it comes to priorities, so I have no trouble
| believing things would be even worse there.
| victorhooi wrote:
| If you're referring to the recent controversy around
| Pushbullet - I thought that was revealed to be them asking
| for _all_ access to any HTTP /HTTPS websites you
| viewed...which is a major security breach.
|
| They removed that permission to limit it to only Pushbullet,
| and then were able to get back on.
|
| I'm not saying there couldn't have been more hand-holding -
| but it wasn't exactly like it wasn't for a fairly egregious
| security breach.
|
| (Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not in any
| Chrome/Android/Store team, or anything even vaguely related
| to that - this is purely my own opinion).
| alias_neo wrote:
| I believe Pushbullet needed it's permissions for the
| features it offered, they even tried removing features and
| permissions just to appease Google.
|
| Regardless of that, just tell people what they've done
| wrong, developers are surely jaded by being told absolutely
| nothing about what or why some faceless mega corp is
| trampling all over their day.
|
| Is it any wonder people like OP lash out in frustration and
| just pull all of their work when one has no means to obtain
| a straight answer? The man has a young child, and that is
| work enough, but it also puts things into perspective, and
| honestly, as a father of a months old child, I'd probably
| respond to this in the same way and think "fuck it, one
| less frustration" and just pull it too.
| orbital223 wrote:
| They removed that permission and were denied again. Only
| after the story got a lot of publicity did Google decide to
| accept it.
| zmk_ wrote:
| They were only allowed back on after they've turned it into
| a big story online.
| neya wrote:
| In the links you've shared, I thought the author (Azer) was on
| the right to behave the way he did. I don't see it as a reason
| to discount his current experience because of that either.
| jv22222 wrote:
| Just came here to say the same thing. He didn't need to swear
| and be so bratty about it, but yeah it seems to me he was not
| wrong.
| leppr wrote:
| "Integrity" is not a desirable trait in this day and age. A
| developer is of little use if they don't respond to short
| term individualistic incentives.
| chmod775 wrote:
| They would have no case if they actually tried to go after
| him to "defend" their trademark. His mail was just empty
| threats.
|
| You can't just trademark 3 letters in a way so that nobody
| else can use them. In fact there's hundreds of trademarks
| that are the letters "kik" in various logos[1].
|
| What they trademarked is a bunch of specific logos containing
| those letters. Doesn't prevent other people from also using
| those 3 letters in some other way.
|
| In fact when he wrote "kik", my first thought was the he was
| talking about the German textile discount store - which is
| the first result for me when I google those letters.
|
| [1]: https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=kik
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I believe that in the left-pad case, NPM severely violated the
| overall trust put in their management by handing over a package
| name (that other people might depend on) without a legal
| process. Now that NPM has faltered like that once, you
| basically need to verify yourself that every package that you
| use is still the same one by the same author, i.e. that NPM
| hasn't silently transferred the name to someone else.
| junon wrote:
| I maintain quite a few high-traffic packages on npm and have
| done so for years. Npm is really bad about handling any sort
| of situation with any amount of grace.
|
| Per my anecdotal experience, they are really good at choosing
| the outcome that benefits them the most/harms them the least
| - which wouldn't upset me since most companies do this, but
| it's Npm's "we're here for the community" type of fake
| attitude that has always bothered me.
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| What was the "other side" of leftpad? As far as I remember, the
| broken system wrought havoc, not the developer who chose to
| withdraw his modules. I don't think the developer's reasons are
| much relevant when discussing how reliable their word is.
| dspillett wrote:
| The broken system allowed him to be a dick.
|
| OK, so the is more to it than that and he did have a genuine
| grievance (I forgot exactly what) bit in dealing with that he
| caused a pile collateral damage for innocent bystanders.
|
| (Innocent bystanders who errantly put too much faith in
| dependency oriented programming which brings us back to the
| broken system)
| roadbeats wrote:
| > With leftpad he told Kik, "fuck you"
|
| In response to a threat starting with "We don't mean to be a
| dick about it" and ending with "our trademark lawyers are going
| to be banging on your door and taking down your accounts and
| stuff like that", I did say "fuck you" to Kik.
|
| If that makes me the character in your mind, enjoy your
| imagination.
| stevenjohns wrote:
| It seems that lots of people are missing that part. The Kik
| guys were doing their corporate double-speak b/s about 'let's
| find a solution' when the only solution is handing over the
| name. All while threatening with door-banging lawyers.
|
| And he did offer them a solution: $30,000 dollars, to which
| they promptly - albeit indirectly - replied with _fuck you_.
| justicezyx wrote:
| How true!
|
| Your own comments come out as one-sided as anyone can be...
| cryptoquick wrote:
| I wonder if anyone is keeping track of just how many developers
| are completely writing off Google just because their support is
| so terrible, and their policies so absurdly draconian.
|
| People give shit to Jeff Bezos all the time, but compared to
| Google, there is no comparison to the level of company-wide user
| hostility and blatant privacy violations with such little public
| accountability, as that of Google's.
| naderkhalil wrote:
| If google takes down an extension but it has loyal followers,
| they can still side load the extension, right?
| nahtnam wrote:
| Honestly, I'd be willing to pay $50 a year or something if that
| means that the bots are less strict when reviewing my app (sort
| of like what Apple does)
| Cymen wrote:
| Hi Azer! It's been a while.
|
| I had the same problem with a Chrome extension for my side
| project Defero (school information system). It uses InboxSDK to
| integrate the Defero address book with GMail. Unfortunately, it
| got flagged for security review and it kept getting rejected no
| matter what I changed. I ended up concluding my authentication
| mechanism and/or my use of InboxSDK was causing problems so I'm
| going to try changing the authentication mechanism.
|
| But working with the Google to try to get it fixed and finding
| the cryptic warnings they hide in various parts of the developer
| console has been extremely annoying. I don't blame you for your
| decision.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes
| sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in
| charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-
| programmers who think they can solve anything with machine
| learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't
| basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly
| flagged and when a human finally reviewed it we found it was a
| mistake each time, so maybe set a flag on this extension to
| double-check next time". Or maybe, have such incidents
| automatically bubble up to the team responsible for the automatic
| screening. But why do that if you're a wunderkind programmer who
| never makes mistakes?
|
| Sorry, this is the only explanation I have for this, I've worked
| with this kind of person twice. Once they got the first version
| of something running they are done, no further testing, no sanity
| checks, no asserts or logger.warn() for "this can never happen"
| branches.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| The other explanation is that they don't really want users to
| have most browser extensions. The browser extensions either
| become features that google wants to embed in the browser, or
| things they don't want, for business reasons. In either case it
| is better if the extension dies after a year or so.
|
| BTW, this doesn't have to be a conscious choice of anyone at
| Google, it could just be the way the incentives turn out.
| lonelappde wrote:
| User friendly features are only incentivized in a competitive
| environment.
|
| Until Firefox or Edge catches up in both performance and
| implementation compatibility to make Chrome-first sites work,
| extension support isn't incentivized
| retpirato wrote:
| This wouldn't be the first time I heard of developers being
| "trolled" with take down notices. That just happened to
| pushbullet, but fortunately they got it resolved & are still on
| the chrome store.
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