[asddubs]

>2. On Chrome, we use an extension to change the default search engine and enable search auto-complete etc, but Google has a policy that such an extension can do one thing and one thing only, and recently removed our extension on account of that [1]. We rebuilt it to meet their needs but had a lot of back-and-forth because we included 'search by image' on a context menu item and the first reviewer felt that was a bridge too far. You'll note that Chrome provides such a context menu item for Google Image search out of the box.

I guess this is so that unrelated extension X can't also change the default search while it's at it, like in the good old IE days, so it kind of sort of makes sense. though if the extension is named after a search engine it should probably get a pass, and the context menu thing obviously is also related to search.

[foobarding]

Yes this is exactly right. There is an industry of chrome extensions that exist to change the search engine to something truly unwanted (yahoo search anyone?) so that the extension author can extract rev share. They often advertise the extension as something else to trick people into installing. The target is often kids. As someone who worked at Google, I was surprised / shocked to see how many kids get targeted by these extensions. “Want to play this cool game? Just install this extension.” It is a really problematic thing without an obvious solution. Google has to fight against unwanted extensions but absolutely shouldn’t hide behind that acting like it is okay to punish competing search engines in the process.

[foobarding]

Also in case you were curious what tipped me off was seeing just how common it is for Chromebooks to not have Google as their default search engine. Totally not the intended outcome of Google creating Chrome OS.