Unpack the extension, too? This process probably reduced the external extension installations by 100x, while they can still pretend that you can still technically install external extensions.
First off, I think their original excuse was BS, because I very much doubt more than a marginal number of users were affected by malicious extensions this way. And second, there has to be a balance between what's safe by default, and what level of freedom/flexibility you have. If that "freedom" is hidden away in 10 layers of submenus, then might as well kill it for good, because it's not going to help anyone.
> Unpack the extension, too? This process probably reduced the external extension installations by 100x, while they can still pretend that you can still technically install external extensions.
Er, no, they say you can't, except for development (and the method that you can use, whether or not you are actualyl doing development, has always been the preferred method for development.) They aren't pretending that they making things available to Windows users, they are saying straight-up that, outside of development, Windows users cannot use non-Web Store Chrome Apps.
Heck, even before they disabled the old, less onerous manual method, Chrome pretended that you couldn't -- if you tried to install extensions directly from the web without setting a command-line flag, Chrome would just tell you that you couldn't install extensions except from the Web Store (you could then drag the downloaded extension to the extensions page and it would install, but Chrome did everything to hide it from you.)
> First off, I think their original excuse was BS, because I very much doubt more than a marginal number of users were affected by malicious extensions this way.
I'm glad you think that. Is there any reason you'd care to share why anyone else should believe it?
> And second, there has to be a balance between what's safe by default, and what level of freedom/flexibility you have.
Any position you choose on the continuum is a balance between those things.
> If that "freedom" is hidden away in 10 layers of submenus, then might as well kill it for good, because it's not going to help anyone.
I think the flexibility retained for developers helps exactly the people it is designed to help.
