by Seth Rosenblatt
Security firm Kaspersky was forced to update its Chrome security extension to make it downloadable from the Chrome Web Store.
Some businesses and their Chrome-using customers are furious at Google's crackdown on Chrome extensions that had been hosted outside of the Chrome Web Store.
Their ire stems from Google's forced disabling of extensions that shipped with paid software that have yet to be replaced, effectively hamstringing those services. Games, financial software, third-party Windows security suites, and productivity tools are among those affected. Some of the people who develop and use the extensions have registered their complaints on Google's product forums.
The change "makes it much harder to build tools to make Chrome a better citizen in the enterprise," said Gary Schare, former Microsoft employee and CEO of Browsium, a company that helps businesses manage multiple browser installations.
"Anyone running an older version of my extension on an unmanaged system just got broken, and there's not a thing I can do about it," he said. His company has been a major advocate for replacing Internet Explorer with Chrome in businesses.
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