I'll do my best to provide some clarity here. Before I begin, though, I should note that this is a personal best effort clarification and that the Chrome Web Store review team is ultimately responsible for enforcement.
I'm inclined to take a relatively conservative view in order to avoid potential pitfalls with future run-ins with review. Merriam-Webster defines "
facilitate" as
- to make (something) easier : to help cause (something)
- to help (something) run more smoothly and effectively
Given that, I'd classify anything that eases, enhances, smooths out, or otherwise assists an end user with online gambling as facilitation. My personal opinion is that "just" tracking online bets and providing analytics related to those bets would constitute facilitation of online gambling.
I'm no expert on crypto and I have not explicitly discussed it's classification with the policy or enforcement folks on the Chrome team. That said, to the best of my knowledge trading crypto and related assets are not considered gambling by the United States government. I'm not a policy maker, but my personal opinion is that it seems logical for Chrome Web Store enforcement to follow the consensus opinion of the world's governments here.
Based on a quick Google search, it seems that whether or not fantasy sports betting is considered gambling is an even more ambiguous question. My personal opinion is that the feature set you described in your last two bullet points sounds a lot like facilitating online gambling so I would recommend against this path. I should note, though, that my tolerance for risk when discussing Chrome Web Store policy with developers is very low. If you do pursue this feature set, I think there's a reasonable chance that you will encounter review issues at some point in the future due to the nature of the gray area these sites exist in. Even if you are able to successfully appeal warnings/takedowns, I suspect that the gray nature of these sites will be a reoccurring issue for you.
Ultimately, though, it's up to you and your council how you choose to proceed.
Simeon - @dotproto
Chrome Extensions DevRel
Hey Chrome team - we wanted to get some clarity on this particular chrome store policy:
Gambling:
“We don't allow content or services that facilitate online gambling, including but not limited to online casinos, sports betting, lotteries, or games of skill that offer prizes of cash or other value.”
Could you please provide more clarity on what exactly constitutes gambling in the chrome store?
Could you please provide clarity on what it means to facilitate online gambling?
We wanted to create an extension that lets users to just track their live betting lines and see analytics - is this allowed? I.e get betting data displayed via a browser extension
Eventually, we would like to allow users to click on those lines and be re-directed to the hosting website (FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMgm etc) where they could log in and eventually place a bet - they would not be placing bets on our chrome extension, but they would just be redirected to the site that they had synced to use so that it is more convenient. Is this allowed?
There just seems to be a lot of vagueness in some of the language that is used that could be open for interpretation so would be great if someone could help us with our questions as it can really impact our product roadmap
