Chrome Web Store is

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

's online store for its Chrome

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

. As of 2024, Chrome Web Store hosts about 138,000 extensions and 33,000 themes.

History

Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 2011, with the release of Google Chrome 9.0. A year later it was redesigned to "catalyze a big increase in traffic, across downloads, users, and total number of apps". As of June 2012, there were 750 million total installs of content hosted on Chrome Web Store. Some extension developers have sold their extensions to third-parties who then incorporated

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installatio ...

. In 2014, Google removed two such extensions from Chrome Web Store after many users complained about unwanted pop-up ads. The following year, Google acknowledged that about five percent of visits to its own websites had been altered by extensions with adware.

Malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

Malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

remains a problem on Chrome Web Store. In January 2018, researchers from security firm ICEBRG found four malicious extensions with more than 500,000 combined downloads. In February 2021, Google blocked "The Great Suspender", a popular extension with 2,000,000 users after it was reported that malicious code was added to it. Chrome used to allow extensions hosted on Chrome Web Store to also be installed at the developer's website for the sake of convenience. However, this became a malware vector, so it was removed in 2018.

References

External links

* {{Software digital distribution platforms Google Chrome Google services Mobile software distribution platforms Online marketplaces of the United States