How Firefox Reacted To the Removal of Ad-Ons from Google Chrome?

In the previous post’ we discussed that Google had to take strict action against a couple of extensions to remove an issue with its Chrome web browser.  As per reported in leading tech blogs, the browser extensions “Add to Feedly” and “Tweet This Page” were spitting out unwanted ads. With the growing concern/anger by the users, Google finally punished them by removing from Chrome app store.

After such an incident, a lot many users were concerned that other Web browsers, like Mozilla’s ultra-popular Firefox, could be susceptible to similar shenanigans, and perhaps rightly so. Therefore, Mozilla’s PR team came up with an immediate response to the development.

According to a post in the Digital Trends; “If you ask Mozilla, however, that issue is not likely to crop up for Firefox users. Here what a Mozilla spokesperson had to say when asked about the possibility of Firefox add-ons getting hijacked with ad-spamming code the way “Add to “Feedly” and “Tweet This Page” were on Chrome.

“For add-ons hosted on addons.mozilla.org, all version updates are code reviewed and tested by a member of our review team, and it needs to pass all of our review policies to be pushed to users via auto-update,” Mozilla’s spokesperson said. “One such policy is that all unexpected changes, such as advertising, needs to be explicitly opt-in. This all makes it more difficult for this kind of hijacking to be effective for add-ons listed on Mozilla Add-ons.”

Looking at what industry experts’ claim; “Mozilla Firefox isn’t exactly bulletproof when it comes to add-on hijacks. A past experience of “Autocopy’ add-on is cited as example. It was developed and then sold to a tech start-up called “Wips”. Once the add-on was acquired by the company, it was re-jiggered to include code containing ad generating instructions. Here, they not only highlighted loopholes in the Mozilla’s add-on approval system but also violated the terms of agreement or service.

Therefore, we will have to see what sort of development comes ahead, particularly when Google Chrome is already in news for quite an extreme step. From the users’ viewpoint, these developments are encouraging as they will help in obtaining quality navigation and browsing experience. We have seen in the past that when people complained about frequent shockwave flash crash incidents in browsers, the developers had to come up with a solution. Therefore, if such bad practice has come to limelight; Mozilla, Google, Apple and other browser developing companies would surely take a deep look at their extensions.

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