A recent post on the Chromium blog revealed two changes coming to the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery. Both changes are introduced to increase the effort of protecting Chrome users against the distribution of malicious extensions.
In the current system everyone can upload Chrome extensions to the gallery, and malicious developers could simply use that to their advantage to either spam the website, or distribute malicious extensions easily.
The new developer fee of $5 is a one time fee that new developers have to pay before they are allowed to publish extensions, themes and apps in the gallery (apps seems to hint at the long talked about Chrome app store).
The $5 fee “is intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts”, says Gregor Hochmuth, Chromium Product Manager.
The theory is that malicious developers may not want to make the $5 payment to distribute their apps, considering that the payment may be linked to a person making the payment.
It is unclear at this point in time how the payments are processed, but the likelihood is that Google Checkout will be used for that.
On the other hand, a $5 payment may prevent extension developers from developing extensions for the Chrome browser. While this may be not the case in the US or Europe, users from countries with a much lower average income may think twice before they spend that money.
The Chrome developers have also added domain verification as another security improvement. Chrome “developers will be able to associate their extensions (and soon their apps) with domains they own or manage using Google’s Webmaster Tools”.
This basically links extensions to a website, and sometimes brand, to help Chrome users identify official extensions from unofficial ones. It may also increase the trust of users in an extension.
What’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments.
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This amounts to a fee for writing open source software…it’s a crazy idea. While I welcome the other measures you mention the headline one is a non runner. Why not instead do as Firefox does and sideline new extensions prior to a testing/evaluation period and require also a certain number of satisfied (based on their using a particular extension and not reporting any issues) consumers prior to the extension being moved into the main gallery?
Indeed. Pay for things that you give away free.
Also in Holland this will be a problem because only 5% has a creditcard. I myself dont have one, it not a ‘habit’ in Holland to have one, because of the extra costs for transactions etc.