Google to Ban Installation of Chrome Extensions from Third-Party Websites

Google announced on Tuesday that it plans to retire inline installations of Chrome extensions, make it impossible to install them from third-party websites.

Google always tried to improve the installations of extension for its Chromium-based Google Chrome web browser, allowing users to install them from the Chrome Web Store and third-party websites if the developers didn't want to publish their extensions on the Chrome Web Store.

This type of installations is called inline installations, but Google received numerous reports of deceptive uses of inline installations of Chrome extensions on third-party websites so it decided to retire this functionality effective immediately for all newly published extensions.

"Extensions first published on June 12, 2018, or later, that attempt to call the chrome.webstore.install() function will automatically redirect the user to the Chrome Web Store in a new tab to complete the installation," explains James Wagner, Extensions Platform Product Manager.

Google Chrome 71 to be the first release to deprecate inline installations

Later this summer, more specifically starting on September 12, 2018, Google will disable inline installations for existing extensions as well, which means that if you have extensions installed on your Chrome browser from third-party websites, you'll be automatically redirected to the Chrome Web Store to complete the installation.

Furthermore, Google said that it plans to retire the inline install API method from its Chrome web browser in early December 2018, and the first release to ship without it will be Google Chrome 71. The company also advises extension developers that distribute extension through their sites to redirect users to Chrome Web Store.

Those who won't be able to publish their extensions on the Chrome Web Store or simply don't want to do so because of various reasons independent of Google's policies have no choice but to retire their Chrome extensions. Google says that this will benefit users in the future to make Chrome a safer place for your browsing needs.