A serious Chrome Webstore bug has cost me 23% of my users. Google doesn’t even care.
There is a serious bug affecting the Chrome Webstore. It hasn’t been fixed in 3 weeks. As far as I know Google isn’t even aware of it. I have tried to find a contact email address for the Webstore team and it doesn’t exist. A bug report has already been submitted, but it’s current languishing as “unconfirmed”. It has already cost me 23% of my users and my user count is still continuing to drop.
The bug? Take a look at the comments shown on
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
Notice an interesting pattern? Apparently ”Aug 9, 2011” comes between “Feb 9, 2011” and ”Feb 8, 2011”. Who knew!
As a result of this bug, the top comment on my app is one from over a year ago complaining that it causes Chrome to crash on a secure banking page. The issue has long been fixed, but now anyone visiting my app’s listing will come away with an uneasy feeling that it might be doing something nefarious. (It doesn’t, obviously.) My active users numbers started sliding the moment the bug was introduced, and it hasn’t stopped since. The worst thing is that I can’t even write a reply; any comment I write disappears.
Here is Google’s message to developers for their platform: we don’t care about you. We are not going to fix major bugs. We don’t want to hear about your problems; don’t even bother emailing us. Develop for Google’s platforms at your own risk.
