[palant]

Note: I am the author of this article.

Well, Google has been introducing policy changes meant to restrict abuse of extension privileges for quite a while. It won’t help however as long as they don’t manage to enforce the policies effectively. These extensions have been at it for at least two years. It was already against Google’s policies back then. Users flagged these extensions back then already. Yet they remained in Chrome Web Store.

Note that I found one similar extension that was removed in March this year. I have no idea why Google removed it (it cannot be user complains) or why they didn’t search Chrome Web Store for similar code.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Removing extensions used by 55 million users is weighed against the loss of functionality provided by those extensions. Maybe Google just doesn’t want to piss off 55 million users (actually a lot more since, as you say, your list of compromised extensions is not complete)

[palant]

Yes, much better to let 55 million users blame the browser for redirecting search queries, excessive ads, erratic behavior and data leaks. :-)

Funny thing is: I can imagine Google being fine with everything on this list but the first point. When it comes to hijacking search, Google is absolutely no fun.