Google Starts Charging a Signup Fee For Chrome Extension Developers 132
trooperer writes "On Thursday, Google introduced two significant changes in the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery: a developer signup fee and a domain verification system. The signup fee is a one-time payment of $5. The announcement says its purpose is to 'create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts.' Developers who already registered with the gallery can continue to update their extensions and publish new items without paying the fee."
Google also made available a developer preview for the Chrome Web Store.
Never fails... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:rhinestone bullet (Score:5, Interesting)
It raises the bar though, and makes for offenses that can be charged if the person doing credit card fraud is caught.
A physical example. If a bike is leaning against a wall, that is just a mere theft. If it has a crappy lock, it is theft and property destruction. If the bike has a good lock and is locked to a parking meter in such a way that it can't be lifted off, then some thief cuts off the parking meter head, the thief is now facing larceny charges, as well as destruction of state/federal property. Similar with keeping things behind a display case. Smashing glass to grab something usually gets a lot more charges than grabbing something off a rack and bolting for the door.
I agree though -- nothing is 100%, but this makes fraudsters have to do more work, and potentially face more jail time if caught.
Re:The $5 ... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's literally trivial to automatically filter out grossly nonfunctional extensions: run chrome in a sandbox, load the submitted binary blob or extension, and check some error codes or a log file. Frankly, if their software engineers can't do this, then they don't deserve to be called that. Now after that initial filtering step, you can get humans involved to look at only those submissions that passed the test.
Posting a message on a forum requires zero knowledge/skills from the poster, whereas even a trivial software extension that loads properly is beyond the vast majority of people with time to kill. That's a major barrier to entry that's already much more effective than a posting fee.
Re:The $5 ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Pre-paid Visa cards are a cash-and-carry item at Wal-Mart. There is currently no ID verification required before they're usable.