[ryanackley]

I don't really understand the righteous indignation. The only way you can presently install a Chrome extension outside of the web store is by going to chrome://extensions in your browser, then dragging and dropping a crx file (packaged extension) onto this page. Chrome will stop allowing this. Why is that a big deal?

If this makes you mad, vote with your feet. Firefox is a great browser.

[RealGeek]

There are a lot of windows application bundling malacious chrome extensions, Firefox and IE plugins with the windows installer. They are installed automatically with explicit permissions from users. Moreover, if you remove the adware from chrome extension settings, it gets installed again automatically upon your next reboot.

I believe this policy shall reduce such abuse.