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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

> a notice dialog enforced by the browser popping up to tell the user the ownership changed and offering them a chance to uninstall

Couldn't the extension do that itself? Why does it need to be a browser feature?

Edit: Quoted portion of comment I was responding to.

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> Couldn't the extension do that itself? Why does it need to be a browser feature?

The reason for wanting such notifications in the first place is because new owners often do dodgy things, and a company that specialises in buying up popular extensions and cramming them full of spyware typically doesn't want you to know about the change of ownership.

So extension authors can't be relied upon to provide this feature. The ones you particularly want to know about go out of their way to hide their involvement.

But then wouldn't those new owners just avoid the notification entirely by buying the original developer's account so there's no way to tell that ownership changed? I'm pretty sure that's how it usually works already, so any notification system would necessarily have to be voluntary.

To my knowledge no browser supports transferring an extension's user base from one extension to another. If you want your users to switch, the only think you can do is show them a link of where to get the new extension they should install.

The GGP suggested "officially transfer the single extension to a new owner" which you can obviously already do (by giving the new owner your account, if nothing else), and "tell the user the ownership changed and offering them a chance to uninstall" can already be done by any extension that has any sort of UI. You don't need to "[transfer] an extension's user base from one extension to another".

The extension could do that itself, but it's possible that the new owner of the extension has hijacked the extension or otherwise has nefarious intent. Forcing the browser to announce this change alerts the user of this possibility.

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