One of the reasons so many people use Chrome is the availability of Extensions. The browser has a dedicated web store called Called Chrome Web Store. Currently. There are close to 140k extensions on the Chrome Web Store.
The vast catalog means a hard time for users to find good extensions. We’ve heard several reports about malicious extensions on the Web Store. To help users find helpful Chrome Extensions, Google has launched two new badges for the extensions listed on Chrome Web Store. These are the Featured badge and the Established Publisher badge.
Chrome Store Badges
The Featured badge will be given to the best of the best extensions that follow the best technical practices for building Chrome Extensions. It also requires extensions to meet best-in-class user experience and design. Google’s team will manually review each extension to check eligibility for the badge.
The Established Publisher Badge will be given to the developers of an extension who have verified their identity to Google and demonstrated compliance with developer program policies. The developer needs to have a positive track record with different Google services.
Most importantly, developers can not purchase these badges. They can submit a request for their extensions to receive the Featured or Established Publisher Badge. The badges are already live on the Chrome Web Store.
Its inclusive nature makes the Chrome Web Store home for many fake and malicious extensions. Hopefully, adding these two new badges will help us find extensions worth using. What are your thoughts about Chrome adding badges in the Web Store? Do let us know in the comments.