Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010,[2] and was opened on February 11, 2011, with the release of Google Chrome 9.0.[3] A year later it was redesigned to "catalyze a big increase in traffic, across downloads, users, and total number of apps".[4] As of June 2012, there were 750 million total installs of content hosted on Chrome Web Store.[5]
Someextension developers have sold their extensions to third-parties who then incorporatedadware.[6][7] In 2014, Google removed two such extensions from Chrome Web Store after many users complained about unwanted pop-up ads.[8] The following year, Google acknowledged that about five percent of visits to its own websites had been altered by extensions with adware.[9][10][11]
Malware remains a problem on Chrome Web Store.[12][13][14][15] In January 2018, researchers from security firm ICEBRG found four maliciousextensions with more than 500,000 combined downloads.[12][16] 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.[17][18][19]
Chrome used to allow extensions hosted on Chrome Web Store to also be installed at the developer's website for the sake of convenience.[20] However, this became a malware vector, so it was removed in 2018.[21]
