Google Removes Option of Installing Chrome Extensions via Remote Webites
Google has declared that it is going to discard the option of installing Google Chrome extensions through remote websites, which is also known as inline installation. This means that from now onwards, users will only be able to install new Chrome browser extensions from their respective Chrome Web Store listings.
Inline Installation Feature Has Been Misused in the Past Years
The key reason to remove the installation of Chrome extensions from remote websites is because malicious Chrome developers have misused the inline installation feature in the past few years. Nasty Chrome developers tricked users into installing deceptive and malicious Chrome extensions on their Chrome browsers.
Till now, the inline installation process has been possible because it allowed developers to create extensions and get the extensions hosted on the official Chrome Web Store. However, this process also allowed the users to install the malicious extensions just by clicking on a button present on a third-party website without having the user visit the extension's Chrome Web Store page.
As a result, this approach has been quite successful as the users never visited the Chrome Web Store listing of the malicious extension, and hence never saw that extension's bad rating or negative user reviews. The bad ratings and negative user reviews could serve as warnings or important clues to the users about the extension's real behavior.
Phase-Out Process in Three Stages
Because of continuous abuse by malicious Chrome developers, Google has now decided to eliminate the inline installation process from both the Chrome web browser and the Chrome Web Store. The phase-out process will be executed in three phases as described below:
- From June 12, 2018, the inline installation process will be unavailable to all recently published extensions. Extensions submitted on June 12, 2018 or later for the first time will automatically redirect the users to the Chrome Web Store in a new tab to finish the installation.
- From September 12, 2018, the inline installation process will be disabled for all the existing extensions and the users will be automatically redirected to the Chrome Web Store to finish the installation.
- From early December 2018, the inline install API method will be discarded from Chrome 71.
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