Google has eliminated a preferred Chrome extension referred to as ClearURLs from the Chrome Net Retailer and its creator has described the corporate’s reasoning for doing in order “ridiculous”.
As reported by The Register, the Chrome workforce emailed the developer of the extension Kevin Röbert to tell him that his extension had been faraway from its retailer resulting from violating its phrases. Based on the Google Chrome workforce, ClearURLs was banned for having an inaccurate description, utilizing permissions and key phrase spam.
Within the extension’s web page on the Chrome Net Retailer, Kevin Röbert describes the way it can forestall undesirable monitoring on-line by eradicating monitoring components typically discovered inside URLs, saying:
“This extension will mechanically take away monitoring components from URLs to assist defend your privateness when flick through the Web. Many web sites use monitoring components within the URL (e.g.https://instance.comutm_source=newsletter1&utm_medium=electronic mail&utm_campaign=sale)to mark your on-line exercise. All that monitoring code isn’t crucial for a web site to be displayed or work appropriately and may subsequently be eliminated—that’s precisely what ClearURLs does.”
ClearURLs
Though ClearURLs has been out there on the Chrome Net Retailer for a while now, it was faraway from the shop after Google found a number of violations. On the time of writing although, the extension’s web page is again up and you may obtain ClearURLs right here.
Even when the extension was unavailable on the Chrome Net Retailer, customers might nonetheless obtain it for different browsers together with Firefox and Microsoft Edge in addition to manually for Chrome from GitHub or GitLab.
One of many causes that Röbert believes his extension was eliminated within the first place is because of the way it might doubtlessly damage Google’s enterprise mannequin because the search big makes use of monitoring components in URLs to assist advertisers. Nonetheless although, Robert made the required adjustments to his extension and appealed in opposition to its removing from the Chrome Net Retailer.
It seems that Röbert’s attraction was profitable however we’ll have to attend and see whether or not or not Google tries to take away related privacy-focused extensions that alter URLs from the Chrome Net Retailer.
Through The Register