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Google is discontinuing paid Chrome extensions. Developers looking to monetize their extensions can no longer do so through Chrome Web Store payments. Google had temporarily suspended paid extensions earlier this year and now announced that it would make this change permanent. The tech giant has shared a timeline on phasing out paid Chrome extensions. Free trials will also be deactivated later this year.
Google announced that developers using Chrome Web Store payments to charge for their extensions or in-app purchases will need to migrate to another payment platform in the near future. The tech giant said that when it launched the Chrome Web Store in 2010, it wanted to provide a way for developers to monetize their Web Store items. Now, he said, developers had access to several other payment handling options they could use.
Developers will no longer be able to create new paid extensions or in-app elements. As of December 1 of this year, free trials will also be disabled. Users will no longer be able to see the ‘Try Now’ button in the Chrome Web Store and requests for free in-app trials will fail. Google said that from February 1, 2021 onwards, existing items and in-app purchases will no longer be able to charge money with Chrome Web Store payments.
Developers using the Licensing API to keep track of who made payments will also need to implement another way to track user licenses. They will be able to use the Licensing API to determine whether users are currently licensed, but that too will be shut down at some point, Google announced, urging developers to migrate their license tracking.
For the export of user licenses, Google said that there was no way to bulk export existing user licenses, so developers would have to enlist the help of users for this part of the migration. Google recommended handling license migration on the back-end system, using the Chrome Web Store API. Developers should use OAuth 2.0 with user consent to access these APIs.
Google had temporarily suspended the publication of paid extensions in March due to resource limitations due to the coronavirus, but it was a follow-up to January, when Google noticed fraudulent transactions with the aim of exploiting users. In February, Google had removed more than 500 malicious extensions from the Chrome Web Store for ad fraud.
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