Chrome extension maker tells of pressure to sell out
Chrome extension maker tells of pressure to sell out
Anyone with sizable audience in this surveillance economy is invited to stuff their add-ons with tracking and ads
I'll be honest, $240K a year is far more than I make now.. I'd probably be shedding a tear as I told them to stick their spyware in their butts. 😥
Notice the “up to” in their offer. It’s likely commission based and inflated numbers to lure the developer into doing it - to trick them into thinking exactly what you’ve said here.
I’d imagine what they actually pay out after you cave is significantly lower, only then you’ve already sold out your users so you might as well leave their tracking in there.
Yep, and theres nothing to stop them from pulling the rug on you once you've given in to their strongarm tactics.
You have to hold strong here and refuse to give in on the little things or they'll make a habit of shaking you down every time they're in the neighborhood because they know you'll cooperate.
And even if they could get $240k the first year, the chances of people abandoning an extension because they are now getting spammed with ads/spyware seems like quite a factor. If my ad blocker started reporting my browser history, I would be dropping that thing like a bad habit.
What would be a better system for developers to get paid (directly by the users, not shady tracking) for their work?
I donate where I can, but that's more something I do on a whim every now and then when I see a link.
A lot of software simply will never earn meaningful income (beyond ads/tracking).
Chrome's disinterest in their own extension store is no accident. They want it to be wild west of privacy abusing actors so that can be the pretext of completely shutting it down. After all, only people tracking you through Chrome should be Google itself.
I'm baffled Google is so uninterested in making a serious effort in combating this practice, in their own add-on store no less. The suggestions outlined by this developer seems like a good start, and are not too hard to enforce.
Google don't care. Hell they probably welcome it since a lot of the companies are probably using Google tools like Adsense anyway.
If they start replacing other ads not from Adsense with Google derived ads, so much the better for Google.
