Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.
Can you go more into what they do if you try to bypass their distribution mechanism? Is there any existing posts sharing experience? I'm curious as this has always been my backup plan if Google takes this action against my extensions.
It's fine on MacOS (albeit a bit clunky), and sideloaded upgrades end up creating two copies of the extension so you'll have to ship your own autoupdater. On Windows, it's a no-go as Chrome will display a scary warning every time you start the browser: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-develop...
Yikes. I use macos but definitely ship up windows. Appreciate you sharing this.