In the coming months, Google will no longer support paid Chrome extensions. Why did Google decide this?
While many extensions for Chome are already free to download, there are also a handful of extensions that you still have to pay for in order to use them. This will change in the coming months: all paid tools for your Chrome browser are no longer supported by Google.
This it means to you
This does not mean that all extensions will be free: developers just have to find another way to ask for money from users and can no longer fall back on the payment options that Google offers.
Developers who currently offer a paid extension will therefore have to switch to another payment method soon. From December 1, the option to offer a free trial for an extension will disappear, and it won’t be until February 1, 2021 that the paid tools will really no longer be supported by Google. In-app purchases must then also go through a different payment processor.
If you currently have current subscriptions to use a particular extension, it will no longer be automatically renewed.
Why?
The decision follows a previous decision by Google to temporarily ban new paid extensions from the Chrome Web Store in connection with the corona crisis. Google has now decided that the decision is permanent.
Google believes that developers themselves can find plenty of other ways to make money from their tools. “Since the Web Store was founded eleven years ago, we wanted to provide developers with a way to monetize their extensions. Meanwhile, the ecosystem has grown to such an extent that there are already enough possibilities within the browser extensions to generate revenue, ”Google said in an explanation of the decision.
Fraud cases
The number of fraud cases with paid extensions may also play a role. At the beginning of this year, Google reported a significantly increasing number of fraudulent transactions, which led to a decision to temporarily block extensions with payments, subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Also this year after research from Awake Security company made it clear that rogue Chrome extensions were widely bugging Internet users. Google then had to remove seventy browser apps. Furthermore, the data of about 1.7 million users was stolen via browser extensions.
By giving up support for paid extensions now, the internet giant appears to be looking to take another step towards making the Chrome Web Store more secure.
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