▲ 30 points

Ask HN: Contact at Google Chrome Web Store?

by gregsadetsky·7y ago·15 comments·view on hn ↗

A Google Chrome extension I created 3 years ago has 50k users. I recently released a new version and have started to make a number of improvements to it. At the same time, my extension was "flagged" and has been in review hell for the past days.

I've received contradictory emails from the store / reviewers. One (non automated one) said that the extension would be back "in 30 minutes", and after that, I received sporadic automated emails telling me that my extension was being removed from the store.

I sent our personal emails to Googlers in my network but no response. Is there any way to reach someone from the Google Chrome Web Store?

Thank you very very much!

15 comments

I've had the same issue with my extension - it has 250k users and it was removed a few days ago with no warning. I recieved one reply 12 hours later saying there was "too many keywords" in the description. It has been in the Chrome Web Store for at least 5 years with the same description - very odd and it is still not restored.

Jeez... best of luck. That sounds awful and completely unfair. "Live by the Store, Die by the Store"........

Yes I feel sorry for people who's entire livelihood rely on these apps - there's no phone number or name to contact just a black hole to email.

Sorry man, I wish I could help you but I only know a few people on the google app side. I'll poke around but no guarantees.

What is the app though?

Thank you!

It's an extension to dictate emails in Gmail. It's used by a wide range of people -- from power email users to people with disabilities.

I have received a number of praise emails over the years -- it's pretty terrible to see all of that vanish with no explanation!

Thanks again

Link to the app?

It's been removed from the store so it doesn't have a page anymore...! There's a number of YouTube videos about it, here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGiIUI-Bdrs

chromewebstore-dev-support@google.com

I've gotten personal replies from emails sent to this address.

Thanks — unfortunately that’s not my case.

I’ve received automated replies, contradictory explanations (the extension will be live — the extension will be removed), etc. from that email.

Did you get someone’s name or email from those conversations?

here it is verbatim:

"Dear Developer, We have reviewed your item, "gif.com.ai," with ID: dfdojjbjcmnilhaenpijacjdgmilecpg and it does not comply with our program policies. Please review this section of our policy:

Developers must not obfuscate code or conceal functionality of their extension. This also applies to any external code or resource fetched by the extension package. One such instance was found in inspector.js

Your item was found to have one or more files that does not comply with this policy."

---

This reply is clearly template based but unlike some of the other replies it wasn't automated. There was clearly a human behind the email addressing my concern.

The total thread is 9 emails back and forth.

By the way. The extension was never re-instated even after I futilely tried to get them to see the light that my code was minified and not obfuscated. :/

This happened after I changed the version number in the package. So unless you need to update your package, don't! Usually changing the description in the dashboard is fine but if you start messing with some of the options it will invite review and a possible lockout.

- Thanks for sending your reply. Mine contains the same template text but does not contain a "Please review this section" bit. It only has the "does not comply" part. i.e., it says that something's wrong, but doesn't state anything else.

- I'm really sorry to hear that your extension was never reinstated...! By the way, my extension is also minified... I didn't know about this rule at all! It was never mentioned in any of the communications, but I am seeing at least one article [0] about this. Is that what this is all about?? I just un-minified and submitted it again (after getting an email prompting me to resubmit)

- Finally, when you say "If you start messing with some of the options", what do you mean? Which options? I'm particularly interested in adding more i18n languages to the extension (amongst other changes). Do you mean to not make any changes to the manifest.json & description in the store, but that code changes are (generally) fine?

Thanks a ton!

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-no-longer-allow-chro...

If you already submitted and its published, I would be careful about updating the package and changing options such as language in the dashboard. I was particularly thinking language as an option that would invite review. But if you need to change and re-publish make sure to also do your code updates externally and xhr from the extension so your able to minimize changes to the package.

I specifically read in the article that I linked above that the reviewers supposedly have a disfavorable view on 'hot loading' code externally, so that developers would not swap in different code than the code already reviewed...

Hmmm. Do you know if "major" extensions such as Boomerang, etc. typically update their extensions on the store, or do they do exactly as you say -- leave the store extension alone as much as possible, and update remote code?

Thanks for your input!