Google is tightening its Chrome Web Store policy to keep its browser light and fast. The new policy will not allow browser extensions to have multiple purposes that slow down the browser interface, in turn affecting the browsing speed.
Google built its Chrome browser for faster speed and has met its purpose to a large extent. Despite a few downsides, one major one being a strong claim by Microsoft that Google collects users' private data through its cloud services, the browser has gained immense popularity.
Google announced in a company blog Thursday that a change in the Chrome Web Store policy will limit browser extensions to a single purpose with easy-to-understand interface .
"To keep with our principle of simplicity, we decided to take a different approach," Erik Kay, Google Engineering Director, explained in Choromium Blog. "Chrome extensions would be simple and single-purpose in nature, and each would only be allowed a single visible UI "surface" in Chrome, a single browser action or page action button. Toolbars wouldn't be supported by design, and users would have more control over which features they added to their browser."
Google's new approach will make it difficult for some genuine developers who want to build and deliver rich add-ons to the browser. But limiting the multi-purpose extensions will only work in favor of Chrome users who can enjoy faster speed with no unnecessary toolbars hanging on top of their browsers.
After the implementation of the new policy, most developers will have to make changes to their existing extensions by splitting them up into multiple separate extensions, which will be reviewed by the web giant for genuineness. But developers have until June 2014 to make the necessary changes to existing extensions, but any new extensions must meet the new policy (Skip to "Extensions Quality Guidelines").
