Paid Support For Chrome Extension Reviews

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AJ1

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Jun 28, 2020, 3:35:52 AM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, Pete LePage, Joe Marini, Chrome Web Store Developer Support, chromewebst...@google.com
Hi,

On behalf of the full developer's community, can you please evaluate and estimate the cost of PAID support for manual reviews for chrome extensions and services?  Maybe via phone call, chat, or direct in-person email support to resolve our issues.

I am writing this after going through the most painful and frustrating experience since 8+ years due to numerous issues like:
- Irrelevant justification for rejection of extensions
- Unclear reasons for taking down extensions
- Unpredictable timelines for reviews and responses
- Automated bot-response making no sense
- Too vague or abstract terms and policies which often makes no sense unless you point them
- Too many other issues and the chrome groups and communities are filled with these junk queries

In sum, we are spending $XXXX amount of money, 100s to 1000s of hours of time, efforts, energy, life and career in building these extensions and apps directly contributing to Chrome, and developers may not hesitate to spend another $100 more to get real support from real chrome review team who can spend little time with us to resolve out issues if they really exist.

Can you propose all of these to your high-level management and put to an end to these?

Honestly, it is highly demotivating to see that our extension being taken down again and again.  I am trying my best to get your focus on the super painful aspects of developers with their extensions and apps  I hope you understand and put an end to these bad experiences.

Thanks.

Deco

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Jun 28, 2020, 4:21:45 AM6/28/20
to AJ1, Chromium Extensions
What exactly is the reason given for your extension rejection?

Thanks,
Deco

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AJ1

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Jun 28, 2020, 4:48:50 AM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, bkar...@gmail.com, Chrome Web Store Developer Support, Pete LePage, Joe Marini
They say it is a violation of "User Data Privacy", and the reason is due to "Post a privacy policy. AND Handle the user data securely, including transmitting it via modern cryptography."

But, I do have privacy links set up long back, and the extension literally not read/store or touch user's data at all, and their point of transmitting it via modern cryptography(maybe HTTPS) is completely irrelevant.


I have clearly asked them numerous times to point out the exact cause but never replied.  It has been the #1 Exif Viewer extension for 8 years, with over 70,000 users.

That's why I am hoping for a PAID support if they can offer to get some real person for direct review. 

I am literally in a hopeless state, and really expecting the community's support on this paid support system to get a decent amount of reliable review service.  

I appreciate your feedback and support on this.


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Deco

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Jun 28, 2020, 8:12:52 AM6/28/20
to AJ1, Chromium Extensions
You should be aware that a privacy policy is not a policy of how data is transmitted, rather how the extension handles data to begin with. An extension not handling data does not mean it doesn't require a privacy policy - it still does. 

Your privacy links must be detailed within said policy, also please refrain from including additional users in your CC's other than the Chromium Extensions thread.

Thanks,
Deco

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Jói Sigurdsson

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Jun 28, 2020, 10:29:58 AM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, AJ1, Chrome Web Store Developer Support, Pete LePage, Joe Marini
+1 to the idea of being able to escalate and get real support for extension authors. Paying for it would be fine by me - it's a matter of livelihood for many extension authors whether their extension remains up and available to users.

Cheers,
Jói

Aruna J

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Jun 28, 2020, 10:34:23 AM6/28/20
to Deco, Chromium Extensions, Pete LePage, Joe Marini
Hi Deco,

Thanks for responding.

I agree with your statements, but when the Chrome team or Reviewers know the exact problem why can't they give specific details about the exact issue?  The developers are spending thousands of hours in implementing extensions and directly contributing the Chrome, so why can't reviewers spend an additional 10 minutes in helping developers with exact issues?

I also worked with extensions teams at Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Safari, and their teams were really professional and real advocates who helped me and many developers from the development stage to final publication, with crystal clear review points and corresponding changes until it complies to their own policies.  They are not just taking down extensions and do nothing, instead really helping developers to rectify the mistakes and publishing them back.

About including some individuals in CCs, I believe they are officially designated Chrome Advocates and expected to be these threads.  As clearly defined here (https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/126313142868157126-developer-advocate-developer-relations/), they are supposed to:
1. Partner/consult with external developers to ensure successful implementation of products
2. Educate developers on best practices
3. Provide 1:1 support for Google partner and developers
4. Advocate third-party developer interests and needs
5. Focus is on supporting third-party developers who build applications and businesses on Google's platforms
6. Your work will foster a community of developers integrating with Google technologies
7. Will help drive strategy around Developer Relations

In my case, they hardly helped me with anything and they followed none of the above.  Its been happening for years with thousands of developers, and with the same pattern of unclear responses to them.  You probably need to read 11M stories in Google search about deliberate action of taking down extensions without appropriate justification, and it's against their roles and responsibilities defined by Google.

When you spend a few years of efforts and $100-200K worth of time and energy in building extensions, and one day if they take down your extension without any justification, then you would probably realize the exact pain, and then I would like to see whether you would just send an email to a tread and wait forever or you try to reach next level or corresponding representatives for help or just give up.

In sum, I have given enough justification for why the developer community needs a dedicated paid support system for the direct and honest review and recommendation service!

Thanks!

Deco

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Jun 28, 2020, 10:49:20 AM6/28/20
to Aruna J, Chromium Extensions
Please be advised that a "developer advocate" is not, and will not be a CWS assistance individual. A developer advocate is an individual who is responsible for the cloud development divisions at Google, they have no contribution, knowledge or information as to how the CWS review process goes, or is like - it is an entirely separate division. Therefore including them within this thread serves no purpose other than to clog their inboxes - they cannot help you as they have no involvement with the CWS division, hence please remove them.

With that being said, I will be paraphrasing Simeon Vincent in regards to the CWS review philosophy with broad pointers rather than specific identifiers, and it is to do with the fact that those who may want to develop malicious extensions would be able to bypass the safeguards put in place if specific pointers were identified for developers, and yes, this hinders development in terms of debugging for failed update packages.

Amend your privacy policy as identified beforehand and re-submit your extension for review.

Thanks,
Deco

AJ1

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Jun 28, 2020, 1:09:43 PM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, bkar...@gmail.com
Your points are directly contracting to their official titles, roles, and responsibilities defined by Google!  I appreciate Simeon's efforts and his involvement in many threads here and in public forums(twitter) and around, and now you are saying he should not help developers to resolve their issues.

If not him or another "developer advocate", who is going to represent the CWS Advocate position and takes its responsibility?

It is still not making any sense if you continue to insist on recommending broad pointers.  It is a ridiculous way of asking somebody to fix a high-level bug in 30-50K lines of code(extension) without actually explaining what exactly the bug is.

If really there is such malicious code and the developer makes the deliberate act of writing dangerous code, then take them down as it makes sense.  But, if there is clean and safe code, running well for years with hundreds of positive ratings and reviews, doesn't it make any sense to Reviewers to consider these facts and make one attempt to prove whether there is a real malicious code exists or not, before taking them down?  Is this the right review process?

This is exactly what is happening with my extension as well.  It's a perfect code and taken down, just because some policy statements not clearly defined as per CWS policy.  How can the Reviewers treat this plain-text policy and associate it to my code as a malicious one, and take it as a reason to take down my extension?

Here is my policy (http://exifviewers.com/privacy.htm) and either you or somebody from CWS explain to me the exact issue here.  Also, my previous code must be there in your CWS store and let them inspect everything and prove to me that there is such malicious code that exists.

CWS Reviewers, Instead of just spending additional 5-10 minutes of time in advising developers with exact/necessary fix when the code is non-malicious code, you guys are taking them down, letting developers do unnecessary testing, opening cases, appeals, groups discussions and back and forth emails, and wasting everyone's significant (~20-30x) time and efforts.  In what way, all of these are justified, and aren't these inefficient processes?  Are these processes and policies designed to help developers or for the sake of the CWS team's comfort of reviewing?

I appreciate your or CWS team's response to all of my above queries which will help everyone here.
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Deco

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Jun 28, 2020, 1:14:42 PM6/28/20
to AJ1, Chromium Extensions
Please do not make assumptions on what I'm supposedly saying - nowhere did I state such a thing as "Simeon shouldn't be supporting people", I'm merely repeating his statement in regards to what he stated was CWS review philosophy - this is not an indictment of his, or my opinions on the matter, it's answering your question.

Thanks,
Deco

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francesco emiro

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Jun 28, 2020, 1:30:13 PM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, bkar...@gmail.com
I think "CWS review philosophy with broad pointers rather than specific identifiers" make sense for sensitive malicious technicals, but not really with screenshots, content policies etc...a simple hint of what is wrong would save us hundreds of hours. I am experiencing rejection from CWS for the same code extension, i was just adding the website built for it in the Google DNS verified homepage field, and i start being rejected for many different reasons, at the moment after trying hard to guess what is wrong ,  i am actually try to publish a version of my extension much safer and detailed than that one before, without the website and guess what? rejected for 3 times just today......sorry Deco but i really miss something here.


AJ1

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Jun 28, 2020, 1:34:01 PM6/28/20
to Chromium Extensions, bkar...@gmail.com
Your previous statement says "developer advocate" is not, and will not be a CWS assistance individual".  But, Simeon Vincent is an official "Dev Advocate for @ChromiumDev Extensions", so it clearly implies that he will not be CWS assistance individual, because he's also dev advocate?

He helped me in the past and also other developers, respect him, and really don't want to bring him into these threads.  But, my point is, if not him, who else is going to help developers and be official CWS public advisor?

This is not even rocket science, there are just two types, safe code, and malicious code. If malicious one, then just warn and take them down. If there is real good and safe code, then at least help advise developers and public it and let billion chrome users use it.  It's the minimum common sense and I really hate explaining these to the CWS team again and again here.



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tweak support

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Jun 29, 2020, 7:03:37 AM6/29/20
to Chromium Extensions, pet...@google.com, joem...@google.com, chromewebstor...@google.com, chromewebst...@google.com
+1 on the idea. Bumping this.
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Vishnu NUK

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Aug 10, 2021, 11:28:40 PM8/10/21
to Chromium Extensions, help....@gmail.com, pet...@google.com, joem...@google.com, chromewebstor...@google.com, chromewebst...@google.com
Yes,
 I had an Extension listed on the Chrome Web store. And I recently contacted the web store team regarding my options to remove some spam comments. And they told me to send screenshots, and I send them a couple of screenshots. After few days, instead of removing abusive/spam comments, they went ahead and removed my Eight-year-old extension. 


NO WARNINGS or COMMUNICATION regarding takedown.

This is pathetic. I never know CWS was this bad. I may keep the spam reviews and shut my mouth for ever.
Now i lost my extension when tried to remove some spam comments lol. 
 

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