Chrome Web Store
Chrome Web Store as seen from Chrome | |
| Launch date | December 2010 |
|---|---|
| Website | chrome.google.com/webstore |
The Chrome Web Store (CWS) is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2019, CWS hosts about 190,000 extensions and web apps.[1]
History[edit]
CWS 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 CWS.[5]
Some extension developers have sold their extensions to third-parties who then incorporated adware.[6][7] In 2014, Google removed two such extensions from CWS 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]
