Day 64: Debugging My Chrome Web Store Rejection
The Initial Rejection
A little over a week ago, Hide Feed was rejected for the first time since I started publishing it back in December:
Expand to view full email
I was surprised, but in a pleasant way — I had discovered a major bug in the submitted release after uploading it, and I had been waiting for it to go live so that I can quickly follow up with a fix since the Chrome Web Store doesn’t allow you to cancel submissions while they’re being reviewed. I thought that the review process had somehow caught the major bug and was happy that the buggy build hadn’t gone live.
The reason that they cited in the rejection seemed a bit strange:
I interpreted that to mean that since the extension didn’t work as intended due to the bug, they were saying that the description didn’t accurately describe the functionality.
I submitted the fixed build with the expectation that it would be accepted without issues.
The Second Rejection
The following day, I woke up to the same exact rejection email:
This email was completely identical to the first one, including the reason for rejection. I had been wrong about the bug being the cause of the rejection. At this point, I wasn’t sure why Hide Feed was being rejected, and I didn’t want to risk getting banned from the Chrome Web Store (or having my entire Google account suspended?) by repeating the mysterious violation:
Requesting Clarification
I asked for clarification:
The following day, I received a reply:
Expand to view full email
Uh, what? I had asked for clarification, and they had responded by removing Hide Feed from the Chrome Web Store. I started thinking about how to fix the situation: Do I message my old co-workers at Google asking for contacts on the Chrome team? Do I write a blog post lamenting my situation and hope it goes viral enough on Hacker News for the situation to be fixed?
Strangely, I found that I was still able to access Hide Feed on the Chrome Web Store. I thought maybe the removal hadn’t gone live yet and held out hope that perhaps it wouldn’t be removed after all. I decided to hold off on making a fuss until Hide Feed actually disappeared from the Chrome Web Store.
I tried to understand the reason they gave for Hide Feed not complying with their policies:
Huh. I hadn’t changed my app description, title, or metadata for quite a while, and it had been approved without issues for months now. What could they be talking about?
I thought perhaps they had a problem with the name “Hide Feed”. I have a tendency to name my apps quite descriptively (see Hide Likes, Web Timer, etc.) but maybe they saw this as using “excessive keywords”? I couldn’t tell.
Requesting Clarification Again (x2)
So I requested clarification again:
Their response:
They had basically sent the same exact email except now my keywords might be “irrelevant” or “misleading” in addition to being “excessive”. Oh boy.
The most frustrating part of this is that they seem to only respond once a day around 5AM EST so every time I got an unhelpful answer, I needed to wait another 24 hours before getting a response.
Also, given that Hide Feed was still listed in the Chrome Web Store, I assumed that their copy was just poorly written and that “Your Google Chrome item […] was removed from the Google Chrome Web Store” referred only to the latest submission rather than the entire extension. That was a relief at least.
Requesting Clarification Yet Again (x3)
I still had no idea how I was violating their policies, so I asked for clarification yet again, this time painstakingly going into detail about the title, description, and metadata (I tried really hard to be polite despite being quite frustrated at this point):
Their response:
Finally! Within the confines of their poorly written and unpersonalized boilerplate, they had let me know what they had an issue with.
I removed the “Supported websites” section of my app description and resubmitted the extension — the next day, it was approved. Hallelujah!
Still, I was a bit perplexed by why they had an issue with me listing the sites supported by Hide Feed as it’s useful information for people considering installing it. I didn’t expect much given their previous track record of excellent and clear responses, but I decided to ask anyway:
They didn’t disappoint:
Takeaways
- If you ever get rejected on the Chrome Web Store and it’s not clear why, prepare to feel like you’re taking crazy pills.
- All of their responses were sent between 3:30 AM and 6:30 AM, so I imagine that developer support is outsourced to India or somewhere else in Asia where the personnel are trained to copy and paste a limited number of templates.
- The Web is the only remaining open platform, and I wish we didn’t live in a world of walled gardens and opaque gatekeepers. Long live the Web.