Block blocked: Google to banish cryptominers from Chrome Web Store

Google will throw cryptocurrency-mining extensions out of its Chrome Web Store after finding so many were badly behaved. From Monday, no more add-ons that churn out fun bucks will be added to the cyber-store's shelves, and by July, those listed in the code bazaar will be removed. The ads giant allowed plugins onto the browser …

[Phil Endecott]

“1 in 9 plugin submissions broke the rules”

vs.

“90 per cent of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store have failed to comply with these policies”

Someone not good at percentages?

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Blame Jim Morrison

5 to 1, baby,

One in five

No one here

Gets out alive

[doublelayer]

These people have made cryptocurrencies too annoying to use

I wasn't very interested in cryptocurrencies in the first place, but I downloaded the monero system to see how well it worked. It turns out that windows defender blocks the executables as malware, because cryptominers might use them, I guess. That would be rather ridiculous, because that requires you to download the full blockchain before you can start, and that takes 42gb of storage and network. I have no clue what they have in there to make it take that much. My main point of this digression, though, was to say that using the basic monero tools to mine wouldn't work very well for the malware people. My main point outside the digression is to say that monero, at least, has reached the point where it is too annoying for me to want to use it.

It works a bit better on linux systems, which I checked after the initial windows test on the laptop I had with me, but it still requires a ton of storage and network, which means it will take hours to initiate. Sure it's secure, but annoying enough that the idealotheorists who like to predict economies operating on cryptocurrencies should try to come up with a better solution.

[Bill Michaelson]

Re: These people have made cryptocurrencies too annoying to use

You don't need the blockchain. You join a mining pool.

[doublelayer]

Re: These people have made cryptocurrencies too annoying to use

Exactly. My point was that windows defender deciding that the monero binaries were malware was pointless because no cryptominer would use them. Ergo anyone with them would be using them for their intended purposes.

[Dan 55]

This is why Firefox dropped XUL for Web API

Aren't we all happy to have traded reduced functionality for the safety that Web API brings?

[Gene Cash]

"fun bucks"

That ought to be El Reg's new euphemism for cryptocurrencies.

[Robert Helpmann??]

Bête Noire

Not as bad as Facebook... Talk about damning by faint praise. I don't understand why anyone thought using a browser extension was a bright idea anyway. Yes, it might run in the background... making your computer slow while you are trying to use it and incurring needless overhead in that the browser needed to be running if it was going to work while the system was not otherwise in use.