Google is taking matters in its hands by retiring spammy chrome add-ons available on the web-store. Since its inception in 2011, Chrome’s Webstore has more than 200,000 — the largest catalog of browser extensions.
The vast catalog has also made chrome a victim of spammers and fraudsters who want to take advantage of the browser’s hundreds of millions of users for a quick buck.
Google, however, wants to clean up the Chrome Web store by reviewing what it considers spam. Most recently, the company has even increased the review times for add-ons.
This, in part, will also ensure that users can discover important extensions faster. Major problems faced by the web store include the availability of copycats, some with misleading functionalities that have fake reviews and ratings.
The new spam policy tweaks up things a little bit to help the company achieve its primary goal of delivering a “clear and informative” path to users in extension discovery.
Google plans to crackdown on copycats by barring developers from publishing multiple extensions with similar functionality.
Developers are also mandated to provide an accurate description and must have attributed testimonials, not anonymous ones.
Less versatile extensions that offer single functionality like “installing or launching another app, theme, webpage, or extension” also won’t be allowed anymore on the web store.
The new policy also warns developers against placement manipulation of extensions. Lastly, Chrome will get rid of extensions with abusive behavior that hurts the overall user browsing experience.
Google is giving developers ample time up to August 27th, 2020, when the new policies will be implemented. All browser extension that will not comply “may be taken down and disabled,” the company said.
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