Last week, Google remotely disabled a very popular Chrome extension, which was found to contain malware. The lead up to that point was complicated, but the final cause may be linked to a change of ownership in June 2020. It is a common refrain at this point: developers profit (as they are allowed to do), but the new unscrupulous owners are interested Just in a quick money. Sometimes, these acquisitions come with a tweet or a blog post; at best, the app or extension will even openly tell you that it is under new ownership. But you can’t always trust that. So, should customers be notified when an extension or app changes hands?
There are right and wrong ways to handle an acquisition. A good example was when Tasker changed hands in 2018. The current owner / developer João Dias was the ideal choice to take on, since he had been contributing related plug-ins for years. News of the move spread everywhere, and basically everyone who used the app knew it. I bet you also can’t find a single customer who is dissatisfied with the way he handled development.
When it comes to more corporate acquisitions, the switch from SMS Backup & Restore from Carbonite to SyncTech was also well handled. The new owners did not try to hide what happened. If I remember correctly, the app in itself it had an interstitial screen informing the news, as well as the changelog of the first update after the sale. And when the new owners made moves to monetize through ads, they maintained a opt-out option so as not to alienate old users.
In both cases, the new owners have remained communicative and responsible, and their related applications continue to be loved by customers. But not every acquisition is so pro-consumer. Cheetah Mobile, for example, has a long history of purchasing apps and then ruins them. Their actions are so hostile to the user (and totally fraudulent) that Google has taken the exceptional step of banning all apps they make from their Play Store. In the world of Chrome extensions, some companies simply go around buying older extensions with an active user base to load them with malware.
While these acquisitions can go well or bad, as far as we can tell, there are no rules that require developers to inform their customers that the app is about to change hands. There is a huge spectrum of results when this happens, but customers often find out only when it is too late and things get worse. Google has many policies for developers ranging from subscription charges to cryptomination on the Play Store, but we haven’t found a single mention of customers being notified of an acquisition – the closest the company comes is that the property itself cannot be misrepresented. or hidden. Google’s Chrome Web Store policies are similar, prohibiting impersonation and deception, but without the need to directly notify customers if your extension is under new ownership.
Chrome extensions are disabled if permissions change, but it doesn’t help if you’re already collecting all of your data and customers are almost trained to simply reactivate these apps without much scrutiny.
Chrome apps and extensions are bought and sold all the time, usually for the worse. Should customers be notified when this happens? Feel free to select all applicable options and include any specifications or qualifications for that opinion in the comments.
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