14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s efforts of purging the Chrome extension store of apps that violate the terms of service are still underway. The latest ones to join the bin are “Add to Feedly” and “Tweet this Page.”
The reason is quite simple – the latest updates made to the extensions include code that brings unwanted ads, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The developer behind “Add to Feedly,” Amit Agarwal, explains on his website that he actually sold the tool to a third party. He says that it took him about an hour to create and the sum had four digits, which made him agree to the offer he got via email one morning.
While he wondered why anyone would pay such money for a very simple tool, Agarwal discovered about a month after the sale that the new owners pushed an update that incorporated advertising into it.
“These aren’t regular banner ads that you see on web pages, these are invisible ads that work the background and replace links on every website that you visit into affiliate links. In simple English, if the extension is activated in Chrome, it will inject adware into all web pages,” he wrote.
Last month, Google announced that it would no longer allow extensions to have more than one purpose. Already existing extensions would have some time to comply with the changes, but new ones will have to respect the new norms.
“Add to Feedly” and “Tweet this Page” are two rather simple tools, but the fact that they inject ads into web pages is quite clearly against Google’s terms of service. Furthermore, they can crowd Chrome’s user interface and slow the browser.
It’s nice to see that Google is taking a much more active stance to protect users of its browser, especially since this is one of the most used tools of its kind in the world.