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Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry your project got pulled. You may or may not want to hear this but I would love if your talents were layered on, say Matrix/Element or XMPP, in part because I want those projects strong and they don't have the same risk of killing your project.

But I admit that's more ideological.

Question about your project: was there any warning? Any sign Google was taking inspiration from you?

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I can’t say this with certainty, but ever since I started building it, I’ve noticed updates and fixes that quietly addressed some of the workarounds I relied on for certain features. It almost felt like they were aware of the gaps I was tapping into. Considering they review the extension, you could read that as a subtle signal… but that might just be me connecting dots that aren’t really there.

For years, the Meet chat barely changed. It stayed minimal and uninspiring. So seeing Google suddenly invest attention in it caught me off guard. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Or maybe they did notice that some users were frustrated enough to start building their own tools just to make the experience better.

Its laughable to think a corporation got inspired by this tiny extension for obvious chat features. Its just an overlap.

Not at all, Google's programmers are real people (I even know one!) and they're aware of feedback and usage, and someone real has to build the features. Moreover there's long historical precedent for features supported via extensions showing up in the core browser. Also it was a question rather than an assumption? I feel like I covered my bases on that one.

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