Chrome extension "Awesome Screenshot" messes with Google search results

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-amazon-treatment-13881.html

by antimora • 15 years ago

81 36 15 years ago

samarudge• 15 years ago

I'm guessing they added an affiliate tag to all the Amazon links so they could make some money from it, wonder how successful it has been. Is it a popular extension?

antimora3• 15 years ago

Very popular. It's got 422,340 users and 12,925 of 5 star ratings.

Here is the link to the extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alelhddbbhepgpmgid...

And apparently there is a corresponding Firefox addon as well, which has 166,107 users. So in total I presume there are over 1/2 million users.

MattBearman• 15 years ago

They probably could have got away with it if they'd just added their affiliate code to Amazon links that showed up organically, they just got greedy.

dspillett2• 15 years ago

That would probably be in breach of Amazon's affiliate policies though, IIRC editing other peoples links (replacing codes, or adding yours to a link that has no affiliate code) is frowned upon and a reasons to have your account closed.

As this is providing extra links rather than changing existing ones, it shouldn't be against Amazon's rules.

I'll no doubt irritate Google though as it could affect their ad revenue. I wonder if it would be possible to detect this sort of thing: implementing some sort of checksum on the content they send out and checking it with client-side script to tell the user that the page had been modified. It would flag up changes some users are expecting (from deliberately written/installed add-ons or greasemnokey scripts, and would not be able to identify the source of the change, so it wouldn't be perfect. And of course add-ins changing the page could just remove the checking code - but that would be a nice big red sign to say never trust a line of code released by this company/person again and would be an arms race (though Google probably has the resources to keep the upper hand in that).

nikcub• 15 years ago

viglink provides an API that automatically adds affiliate links to your page or software product and it supports Amazon

tslocum• 15 years ago

This article fails to mention that the result-tampering is provided as a default-enabled option.

Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/7C5oM

antimora3• 15 years ago

I am not sure when though the software was updated (either to have this checkbox or something else) according to Joel (developer) http://www.seroundtable.com/google-amazon-treatment-13881.ht...

toni• 15 years ago

Apart from the fact that a screenshot utility - by nature - should have nothing to do with tampering Google search results, the developer of this extension could handle the situation more decently by explicitly mentioning this feature in the description page, setting the option as default-disabled and then ask the users to support the extension by enabling this option manually.

bemmu• 15 years ago

With an option like this clearly visible, might this be an acceptable way to make money with a Chrome extension? There certainly don't seem to be many options available for developers, apart from the other highly annoying way of periodically throwing the user to a "your extension has been updated!" page with ads on it.

yuvipanda2• 15 years ago

Would've been absolutely fine if it were:

1. Disabled by default 2. Publicized properly (and not sneaked in)

yuvipanda2• 15 years ago

We used this everyday at work, but it's gone now.

But, I wonder how many people will actually notice this and remove it. Unless this creates a huge storm, I don't know how many of it's supposed half a million users will care.

libria• 15 years ago

Ads are Google's cash cow; they'll care.

BTW, it has to be uninstalled. Patrick Altoft notes that it still affected his search results even after disabling. http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-partners-with-amazon-to-sh...

antimora3• 15 years ago

And I actually was about to spread the good word about this extension to my coworkers because this extension is very useful compared to other screenshot tools because it can capture the whole page instead just the screen area.

tuxychandru2• 15 years ago

Webpage Screenshot does full-page captures, in case you're looking for a replacement.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ckibcdccnfeookdmba...

derleth• 15 years ago

> it can capture the whole page instead just the screen area.

Screengrab for Firefox has been doing this for a long time now. It also allows you to select a region to capture with your mouse.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/screengrab/

metachris• 15 years ago

The Screen Capture plugin (by Google) can do that as well: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cpngackimfmofbokmj...

madh• 15 years ago

It also gives you an URL for the screen shot which is really useful IMHO.

arnorhs2• 15 years ago

Btw. if somebody's looking for a good screenshot application that automatically creates a URL when you take a screenshot, I can't recommend this software enough: http://getcloudapp.com/

You can also drag files onto the icon and all kinds of stuff - there's also a keyboard shortcut to upload the contents of the clipboard to a URL.

Works well and is available on all platforms.

Edit: (ouch, harsh down-votes) Sorry, not all platforms, only OSX and Windows (AFAIK). The windows version was built by a third party on top of their API and works exactly the same way: http://fluffyapp.com/ - I use both versions daily and I'm addicted.

Re-edit:

- a beta linux client: http://abhinandh.com/post/2755166494/cloudapp-for-linux-and-...

- ipad and iphone clients: http://bluenubeapp.com/ & http://cloud2goapp.com/

- android client: http://android.appstorm.net/reviews/utilities/share-easily-w...

- wordpress plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cloudapp/

est• 15 years ago

Works on all Mac platforms.

arnorhs2• 15 years ago

There is a pc version built on their API that works exactly the same way: http://fluffyapp.com/

iaskwhy• 15 years ago

Just in case anyone's looking for an alternative, you can try the similiar Screen Capture by Google: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cpngackimfmofbokmj...

erikb• 15 years ago

Do people really install an extension with the fabolous name of "Awesome Screenshot"? It already sounds like spam and/or at least trojan software.

Edit: This post is not trolling. I really often got the recommendation to install that plugin but always didn't because I already thought it can't be good, after reading the name and surfing the web for some years. I mean everybody here knows spam emails and these trojans many people had on their machinese 10 years ago, right?

joel_liu3• 15 years ago

Hi All, This is Joel, developer of awesome screenshot. I am so sorry to add the amazon search result in google search result page without info our users first. It's such a bad decision.

This additional features was designed to scratch our own itch. Because when I search some shopping items in google, I always want to check them in amazon at the same time.

In the spirit of transparency, we should disclose that this feature does bring small amount of revenue to us, which enables us to continue to improve this product.

Since so many users don't like it, we already updated a new version(3.2.1) to remove this feature.

lean• 15 years ago

> Because when I search some shopping items in google, I always want to check them in amazon at the same time.

Seriously? You expect us to believe you maliciously hijacked user's search results and put in your own affiliate links just because you thought it would be "nice"??

>In the spirit of transparency

AKA "Now that we got caught acting against the spirit of transparency..."

>we should disclose that this feature does bring small amount of revenue to us

Yeah, no shit; but someone else already "disclosed" that.

>Since so many users don't like it, we already updated a new version(3.2.1) to remove this feature.

So what? You've demonstrated a lack of respect for the user's trust and privacy. Why should we trust a liar?

joel_liu3• 15 years ago

>Seriously? You expect us to believe you maliciously hijacked user's search results and put in your own affiliate links just because you thought it would be "nice"??

I just told the intension behind this feature: 1) It's from my need. 2) It can help us make small mount of money. 3) We provide an option to disable it.

I apologize for the bad decision. We should did it like this: 1) Disable it by default. 2) Ask user's permission to enable it 3) Tell users why we add it.

I did it wrong but still respect users. This feature exists only one day and I removed it the new version.

swombat• 15 years ago

Good of you to come out and apologise for it (and remove the hidden feature), but this kind of fails the plausible deniability test...

"I mistakenly added a feature that would show our referral links to half a million users in their search results" isn't really believable.

joel_liu3• 15 years ago

The intension is to make a small mount of money from the referral links while it still helps some users. However, I did it in a wrong way. Maybe we should did it like this: 1) Disable it by default. 2) Ask user's permission to enable it 3) Tell users why we add it.

matdwyer• 15 years ago

I don't have your extension installed, but if I did I wouldn't have a problem with this (provided I knew about it). I understand you have to make some $$$, and really affiliate links don't hurt me at all/change my price.

drivingmenuts• 15 years ago

Acc. to this article (http://blog.arpitnext.com/2010/08/googles-reply-on-chrome-ex...), Google does not review add-ons by third-party devs at all.

Which makes me think we shouldn't be installing any of them.

WesleyJohnson• 15 years ago

Though only really useful to those who can read code/program themselves, I find the "Extension Gallery and Web Store Inspector" extension to be useful for this kind of thing. It gives you an omnibar icon when you're viewing an extension in the Chrome Web Store/Extension gallery which let's you view the actual permissions the extension is requesting, a list of Chrome API calls it makes and you can also go in and view the actual code of the extension. I tend to do this before installing any extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bbamfloeabgknfklmg...

Chrome extension "Awesome Screenshot" messes with Google search results

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