[gwd]

What people seem to be missing is that this isn't a complaint -- it's a call to form effectively a union:

Therefore, we are starting a group today for Chrome Extension developers to work together in check with CWS. It's not a technical support channel, nor a platform to get attention when CWS is unresponsive. It's a place for Chrome Extension developers to rally together and discuss improving the foundation we stand on (it also won't be hosted nor managed by Google).

United, we can have a stronger, common voice to:

Pressure Google Chrome to allow for 3rd party extension stores. This would break down the walled garden of extensions, give extension developers a leveler playing field, and lower the risk of getting wiped out on CWS's whim.

2. Pressure CWS to be more fair and communicative with extension publishers.

Canned emails about rejections with only general policy information are “lose-lose” for publishers and CWS alike. Both parties waste time because of all the guesswork involved currently — especially when CWS makes a mistake.

[hirundo]

"United, we can have a stronger, common voice to: ... Pressure Google Chrome to allow for 3rd party extension stores."

And so the mice voted to bell the cat.

[ThrustVectoring]

Note that Chrome Extension developers are not employees of Google, but rather disparate businesses, so it'll be difficult to both successfully put pressure on Google w.r.t. terms of business and not fall afoul of anti-trust laws.

[danShumway]

Is this true?

How would this be different than the Author's Guild negotiating ebook rates with libraries/Amazon? It seems like lots of industries have lobbying groups that represent multiple companies -- or is there an extra nuance here I'm missing?

[fragmede]

Broadly no, because the barrier to entry for being a web developer is low, though there may be some subtlety depending on the exact actions the group takes. A high barrier to entry business would more easily face allegations of anti-trust and collision, eg all of the car dealerships in an area working together to keep prices high and keep competition out, but that's different due to how hard much more expensive it is to become a car dealership.

[singlow]

That's good because collision is generally bad for car consumers.

[lmkg]

You probably meant "collusion" but what you wrote is, in fact, quite true as well.

[vageli]

Seems they were poking fun at the parent's typo which also states "collision".

> A high barrier to entry business would more easily face allegations of anti-trust and collision, eg all of the car dealerships

[adrianN]

Is the barrier to entry to be a web developer really that much lower than the barrier to being an author of a book?

[donmcronald]

The current system benefits large companies and detriments small developers, so I think it would probably just open the door for large companies to take over all the popular extension types.

If uBlock Origin stopped supporting Chrome, AdBlock would fill that void. If Honey has problems, an executive from Ebay calls an executive from Google and it's fixed instantly, so there's no incentive for them to participate. In fact, anyone making a decent amount of money isn't going to want to change the system.

[dogma1138]

Publishers need authors to make money, google doesn’t need extension developers.

[derefr]

In theory, Chrome works fine without extensions. In practice, if Chrome was "banned by the Extension developers' guild" so that every other browser got to participate in the WebExtension ecosystem except for Chrome, people would leave Chrome quickly. (Sadly, probably for some "exactly Chrome, but not by Google" browser, rather than for Firefox.)

[dogma1138]

People won’t leave chrome quickly or at all, Chrome didn’t win the battle of the browsers due to having better or more extensions it won because of 3 major factors.

Better brand recognition - more people switched off IE to Chrome than from FF to chrome (hence why I’m not putting the terrible performance and reliability issues that FF used to have like crash and lose all tabs as a factor but it took a decade for FF to sort their shit together and by then it was too late).

Better integration with Google services right when a Google account became quite important.

Being the default browser for the Android eco system.

So I don’t know who would exactly leave Chrome because of extensions but I have a feeling that even you wouldn’t.

[danShumway]

> google doesn’t need extension developers.

If this were true, wouldn't that make it even less likely that an Extension Guild would fall foul of antitrust regulation?

[Tiltowait--]

Google has nothing to fear from anti-trust laws. They just got away scot-free with publicly colluding with NBC to...oh you mean the little guys would fall foul of anti-trust laws. Yeah that would be a problem.

[akira2501]

> and not fall afoul of anti-trust laws.

Well, it seems easy enough. Just don't call yourself a union.. call yourself a "standards body" and organize the way ANSI and ISO do.

[sergeykish]

Just make Chromium fork that supports 3rd party galleries, prove it is secure and desirable, than it may be upstreamed some day.