An “experiment” in Chrome 72 is causing a bug that breaks certain extensions, including ad blockers, extensions that integrate with Gmail, and some VPNs. Thankfully it’s easy to fix, and get your extensions back to working as expected.
Safer Internet Day is officially today, but Google is spending the entire week discussing security and launching new features. The first is a Password Checkup Chrome extension that will advise users to reset credentials breached on third-party sites, while Cross Account Protection extends first-party tools to re-secure breached Google Sign In apps.
Last week, Google unveiled the first draft of a collection of changes to the Chrome extensions platform, known as Manifest V3, which received almost immediate backlash from the developers of ad blocking extensions. The developer of Tampermonkey is now joining in on the Manifest V3 conversation, detailing how it would stop the popular extension from working altogether on Chrome.
Yesterday, it was uncovered that Google is proposing a new set of rules and APIs for Chrome extensions to use, called Manifest V3, which, among other things, would severely hamper the capabilities of ad blocking extensions like uBlock Origin. The extension developer community is lashing back in a large way, with the developers of well-known Chrome extension Ghostery even considering an anti-trust complaint should the proposed change go through.
Over the years, Google Chrome has changed in many ways, some good, some not so much. Google is proposing a new change to Chrome that arguably falls into the latter category as it will adversely affect the functionality of ad blocker extensions like uBlock Origin and AdGuard.
Chrome Extensions are very useful, but are ripe for abuse given the utility and wide-ranging access. Google in the past year has taken steps to police extensions, but is today announcing more policies aimed at developers, as well as new options to give users more control.
Over the weekend, we spotted that the “Save to Google” extension for Chrome was set to be discontinued next month. The reasoning behind that is still unclear, but the scheduled deprecation of another Google-made extension makes more sense.
Unbeknownst to most users, Google has long featured native “Save” functionality to bookmark links and images. First built into Image Search and later the Search app on Android, Google also maintained a Chrome extension to save pages. However, Google is set to kill that client next month, thus sending mixed signals on the future of the feature.
Chrome has long allowed sites to display install prompts for browser extensions to provide a seamless experience. Protections help insure that these inline installations aren’t abused. However, Google is now going further by making abuse detection run faster and more accurately.
Recently Twitter launched a new dark-themed “Night Mode” for its Android and iOS apps. The new theme trades bright whites and blues for a dark blue background with lighter accents colors. Twitter hasn’t mentioned anything about bringing this new mode to the web anytime soon, but a new Chrome extension brings the functionality over, mostly, with just a simple click…
Following the announcement of Allo, Google reiterated that Hangouts would remain as an enterprise-focussed messaging solution. To that extent, Hangouts will continue to receive new features, including an updated Chrome extension that introduces a tablet-like UI.
Update: The Android app is receiving a similar update that allows users to add notes right from the Share menu. Additionally, hashtags in notes now act as labels.
Google Keep started out as a basic, cross platform note taking app with reminders and has slowly gained more features like image uploading, advanced search, and drawing. An update today adds a new Chrome extension that allows users to easily save and markup web pages and images.
In case you missed it, John Oliver took 20 minutes on Last Week Tonight to roast Donald Trump, finishing the skewering with mentioning that one of Trump’s ancestors actually changed the family name from “Drumpf”. Tying this in with his opinion that “Trump” is little more than a brand (and that it’s that brand that has given him this much success thus far), Oliver says that we have to decouple the man from the name so that we can see Donald for who he really is.
Enter the Drumpfinator Chrome extension…
The first screenings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will take place from tomorrow night in certain parts of the world. If, like me, you can’t go to see it this week you’re going to have a task on your hands trying to avoid spoilers. Once screenings have taken place, the internet will be full of comments and reviews of the most exciting movie to hit theaters this millennium. Thankfully, there’s a Chrome browser extension to which should make it easier to avoid reading them.
Star Wars Spoiler Blocker helps you avoid spoilers by detecting content on page and blurring it out with a full-screen graphic. It’s currently in version 1.0, and was originally released at the end of last month. But with this week being Star Wars week, we felt it right to bring it to your attention before it’s too late.
If you have any burning questions like ‘Does Luke Skywalker turn evil?’, ‘Will the Ewoks make an appearance?’ or ‘Does Princess Leia still have the gold bikini?’, you’ll be able to wait until you see the movie for yourself to find out. As with virtually every extension, the Star Wars Spoiler Blocker is free to install on your browser.
Researchers at Google have today launched a wacky new experimental Chrome extension that lets you share the URL of your current browser tab with nearby Chrome users only using sound. It’s called ‘Tone’ and to use it, both you and receiver of the link you would like to send need to be in earshot of one another, be using Chrome with the Tone extension installed, and have computers with decent speakers and microphones…
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Google today launched a new extension for Chrome that’s intended to directly help the company improve its browser. It’s called Chrome User Experience Surveys, and the gist is that users with the extension installed will occasionally get a pop up survey in their browser window when something unusual or unintended occurs in their browsing experience; these surveys should typically take less than 2 minutes to complete and are capped at appearing a maximum of four times per week.
In the company’s product forums, the Chrome team has proactively provided answers to some concerns they anticipate to be raised, including whether or not the company will collect and store browsing history with this extension (answer: no), and whether or not the extension will impact a user’s browser performance (again, the answer is no). “The only data this extension sends to Google is when these infrequent events occur and your survey responses,” the team states in the post. Keep in mind that if you use other Google services like Search and Gmail, they probably already have a lot of data about you anyway.
An example of a webpage made completely unusable by injected ads
A Google-sponsored study carried out by the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara found “tens of millions of instances” of ad malware in the course of just a few months. In all, they found that a staggering 5.5% of unique IP addresses – representing millions of users – were affected.
Ad injection malware drops its own ads into whatever web page an infected machine displays. Revenue from these ads is filtered through ad networks, where genuine companies end up paying the bills, effectively stealing revenue that should have gone to the websites themselves.
Some of this malware goes further than simply injecting ads …
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Google today is launching a new tool called Password Alert that will allow users to keep track of sign-ins on their account with notifications and change their password if necessary. The new tool comes in the form of a Chrome extension and allows users to easily change their password if a fraudulent sign-in attempt is detected.
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Google announced today that it’s releasing a new Chrome extension called Application Launcher for Drive that allows users to open files directly from its Google Drive service in compatible apps on a Mac or PC. The extension adds an “Open With” option that will let users launch files in apps like, for example, Mac OS X’s Preview app or third-party editing apps like those from Adobe and Microsoft.
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Today, Google announced that it has integrated Google Analytics statistics into its Publisher Toolbar. This gives website administrators fast access to performance statistics, making it easier for them to gauge trends and other data related to their web properties. Available to download from the Chrome Web Store, the Publisher Toolbar also lets you quickly monitor individual ad stats and block inappropriate content from your website.
Today, Microsoft announced the availability of its OneNote Clipper extension for Chrome. Released earlier this year, this point and click app lets users snap bookmarks of just about anything on the web, making them available to be viewed at a later time. Kind of sounds familiar, huh? To download this software visit onenote.com/clipper while using Chrome and click the install button.
ZOMG, Rather, a brand new Chrome extension is the last best tool you’ll ever need to block unwanted annoyances in your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Did you miss last night’s episode of Walking Dead and you’re tired of seeing spoilers in your feeds? Good news, Rather will let you replace any mention of the Walking Dead with images of puppies!
You should be on notice that Rather replaces based on keywords and can’t block out unwanted images of Miley Cyrus if she isn’t mentioned by name. The replacement photos are also grabbed via Instagram, so if some crazy teenager tags her Instagram image with “cats” you might see it appear in your feed as well. The bottom line is that the service, while awesome in its design, isn’t foolproof.
Google today announced on Google+ that it is introducing a new Chrome extension that will allow users to save content from on the web directly to their Google Drive account. Using the new Chrome extension, users will be able to select which part of a webpage they want to save, such as “an image of a page, the HTML source code, or a Web archive.” Once installed, users will also get an option to save images, links, or files directly to Drive when right clicking.
Google also explained it has made enhancements to the photo viewer in Google Drive that allows users to zoom, fit to page, and comment:
We’ve also added a few new ways to work with images that are already stored in Drive. You can now zoom by scrolling or using the new fit to page and 100% buttons. And if you have something to say about a specific part of an image, you can select a region and add a comment to it.
The Google Drive Chrome extension is available from the Chrome Web Store here.
Google has been on a role rolling out new designs across all of their products, including Google Search. Techno-Net (via Google Operating System) has discovered that with a small cookie change you can try the latest version of Search. The new version features a less uncluttered look, but we’ve read it isn’t as fast as the version you know and love. Head on past the break to see how it’s done.