Google Temporarily Suspends Paid Chrome Extensions

Jan. 29, 2020

Following a string of recent reports about fraudulent transactions using the Chrome Web Store’s (CWS) paid extension system, Google is temporarily suspending all suchChrome extensionsfrom the platform, pending a resolution. In an official statement on Tuesday, the company cited a“significant increase in the number of fraudulent transactions involving paid Chrome extensions”as the reason behind its tough stance. Thankfully, items that do not use the Chrome Web Store payments are not affected by this issue.

Google says it is only ‘temporarily’ suspending the publishing of paid items on the CWS. According to the company:“Due to the scale of this abuse, we have temporarily disabled publishing paid items. This is a temporary measure meant to stem this influx as we look for long-term solutions to address the broader pattern of abuse … We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible, but we do not have a resolution timeline at the moment”.

It’s noteworthy that Google is not allowing any new paid extensions to be published on its web store, however paid extensions that were published before the suspension are still available to purchase from the Chrome Web Store.

As things stand now, there’s no timeline at this point for the ban to be lifted, so it will be interesting to see how the company manages to address long-term security issues going forward.

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