User cancelling extension subscription : what happens ?

[9ine1...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I have a question already asked by another user but which didn't received an answer :

If one were to charge a monthly subscription fee for an extension, does Chrome automatically disable the extension if someone cancels their subscription? Or would my extension have to continually check the status and disable itself if they have stopped paying ?

 I would like to sell an extension on the web store with a subscription model. Admitting a user download the extension and stops the subscription 5 months later.
Which of these 3 cases is actually the current system :

1) Do Google automatically disable the extension making it unusable ?

or

2) Do the user keep the extension working but Google stops updates ?

or

3) Do Google does nothing ?

In case 2 & 3, I guess I have to check myself if the subscription has expired directly in the code & in that case, making it unusable with a kind of API (but which one?).

Thanks you for an answer,

Matteo

[Bruno Prado]

Hi Matteo. I have the exactly same question.

Even though theres somo documentation for the payments api, its not clear how the subscription work on Chrome Extensions.

Will you someone give attention to this?

Thanks.

[Sachin Jain]

Hi Guys,

I recently used Google Licensing APIs in one of my products - Integrately (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/integrately/eelhlheepgmeiklohkfcjhpnpmlmmgha?hl=en)

Feel free to check out how I handled the situations in the tool and here are the answers to your questions.

1) Do Google automatically disable the extension making it unusable?

Answer - No, You have to fetch the license details of the current user. If the user is not signed in, you can make the request in interactive mode to open the signin window and in the response you will get the status - whether the license is expired or not by using accessLevel attribute in the result. Depending upon the value, you have to handle it in your code - Show some kind of dialog etc

2) Do the user keep the extension working but Google stops updates? 

Answer - Again, It depends upon how you handle this situation. AFAIK updates are not stopped, the user will still receive the update.

3) Do Google does nothing ?

Answer - Google tells you the status like FreeTrial, time when the license was created so that you can calculate the amount of free trial left in your application etc. I think that's sufficient information to take further actions in your code.

One of the things which I wan Google to improve is they should provide an easy mechanism to upgrade right within the application. I think right now, user has to upgrade via chrome store.

Let me know if something is not clear.

Thanks

-Sachin

[Simeon Vincent]

With respect to #2 my understanding is that Chrome will still attempt to fetch updates but CWS won't give anything back due to the lapsed subscription. The last update pre-expiry will still be on the user's machine. You can and may want to use the IAP API to occasionally check if the current user has an active subscription and to disable functionality if they don't.

Simeon – @dotproto

Extensions Developer Advocate