Google's clever-clogs are focused on many things, but not this: The Chrome Web Store. Devs complain of rip-offs, scams, wait times

Programmers are complaining that Google's Chrome Web Store still looks more like an ill-tended shack than a legitimate store. Developers are continuing to complain about dubious extensions with fake users, extension copying, and long waits for extension approval, among other gripes. Over the weekend, an individual writing …

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be described as a House of Cards?

Professionally, this a bloody nightmare, where I work we have Chrome installed on other over 150,000 laptops globally.

Personally, I don't give a shit about Chrome, but again it's still a bloody nightmare, as I main use Vivaldi.

One person in the article mentions he's surprised Google re doing such a crap job, especially since other Vendors are now basing their browsers on Chromium - That raises a curious question, are the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Opera and Vivaldi paying Google, i.e for the privilege of allowing them access to their App store, or even contributing financially towards the development and up-keep of Chromium.

[Dan 55]

Re: Could it be described as a House of Cards?

Why would they need to contribute financially, considering that MS, Apple, etc... already contribute fixes to Chromium and Chromium pays for itself by being compiled into the data slurp-engine that is Chrome?

[katrinab]

Re: Could it be described as a House of Cards?

Safari doesn't use the Chrome Web Store.

Chrome is a fork of Safari, so the question should be, are Google paying Apple for the use of their code?

Safari is in turn a fork of Konqueror, so does the KDE project get money from either of them?

[woppo]

Re: Could it be described as a House of Cards?

Where do you find that Chrome is a fork of Safari?

[katrinab]

Re: Could it be described as a House of Cards?

User agent string for Chrome:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.117 Safari/537.36

Also:

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/blink/

[woppo]

Re: Could it be described as a House of Cards?

Thank you for educating me :-)

[sbt]

"...doesn't have enough personnel to provide individualized support"

So, totally standard for Big Internet, then.

[amanfromMars 1]

Experienced Former Formative Travellers Needed

What is all too apparently missing from Google's Chrome Web Store are Mentors.

[Mike Moyle]

"Regarding oversight of fake users, Google should absolutely be policing this, not only for the abuse of their recommendation system, but also for the abuse of Chrome users in general,"

Google: You can't abuse Chrome users; that's OUR job!

[IGotOut]

I'm confused...

These Devs seem surprised about fake reviews, rip off products and apps that are nothing but ad-serving scams...

Have they never used Google Play?

[Orv]

On its way out.

As a long-time ChromeOS app developer, I'm of the opinion that Google fully intends to axe the ChromeOS platform and replace it with Android. This explains why the web store is so understaffed, why the Chrome API has stagnated, and why they removed Chrome App support from desktops.

[vtcodger]

Your Inquiry

The Register asked Google for comment but no one responded.

We're sorry, but your personal Alphabet AI agent is on break. A fire drill is scheduled later this afternoon so your agent may be unable to reply today. Normally we'd promise a reply tomorrow, but that's when Diversity training is scheduled. So maybe Thursday. Your inquiry is currently number 3267 in the queue. Rest assured, your inquiry is very important to us.

[Rich 2]

Why should Google care?

Google already have a bazillion stupid people using their browser as it is. So it seems the crap state of their "app store" is largely irrelevant to the success of their spy network.

So why would they bother injecting resources into making their app store better? For what gain?

I can see one downside of a better app store; it might encourage someone to come up with a sure-fire way of switching off all Google's built-in spyware. Now they wouldn't want that, would they?