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by higherpurpose 4505 days ago
Because it is BS. The drag and drop "security feature" for external extensions was more than enough to protect against the vast majority of "evil extensions" (which I believe was a small amount to begin with, and Google never even bothered to show us any numbers behind these "scary external extensions that are totally going to destroy the world if we don't do this", before they even implemented the drag and drop restriction).

Watch for their next step - getting rid of all Adblockers in the store. This has nothing to do with security, or rather very little to do with it. The real agenda is something entirely different (not letting the user to install whatever extensions he wants: Adblock, TPB unblockers, Hulu/Netflix unblockers, Youtube downloaders, and so on). MPAA didn't get on W3C's board for nothing, after all.

I've warned before this would happen, when MPAA joined the W3C. They're going to demand more features be removed from the browsers that they think "facilitate piracy", and Google is totally going to go along with it, because many of the requests benefit them, too, especially if they get something in return from that from the big studios and so on. Some just benefit them directly (removing Adblock).
1 comments
mhurron 4505 days ago
W3C doesn't dictate what features browsers have or do not have, they're concerned with web standards. The MPAA joined to make sure DRM showed up in HTML5, not to tell Google to take out ad blockers.

If Google removes ad blockers it will be because Google's revenue is based on ads, not because the MPAA or the W3C told them to.

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Touche 4505 days ago
I think that's a little naive. Google sells Hollywood movies and tv shows in their Play store.
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mhurron 4505 days ago
And what does that have to do with an ad blocker in Chrome?

Lot's of companies sell content though the Play Store, maybe it's NBC that is forcing Google to remove the ad blocker /sarcasm.

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Touche 4505 days ago
> And what does that have to do with an ad blocker in Chrome?

Google owns both Chrome and the Play Store...

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mhurron 4505 days ago
So that means that people using the Play store can dictate what does and does not go into Chrome? Damn, I need to get that $25 developer account.

Again, what does movie distributors selling movies through the Play store have to do with the MPAA dictating what is and is not in Chrome?

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