Software opportunity: Thousands of Chrome Extensions are about to disappear

Hm, I tried it with one extension and it got immediately flagged and removed from the store. I think it detected it was merely a copy. I think you'd have to invest much more time in making it unique so it gets past these checks. Interesting idea though, thanks for sharing.

The source of most of the extensions is compressed and obfuscated. Good luck being able to understand this kind of code.

This would be a waste of time if you want to take this shortcut for the indie idea.

Many issues were mentioned in the comments: copyright, auto-removed by Chrome as duplicate, license, and more.

The extensions themselves could be hard to migrate from Manifest v2 to v3. That's why some of the owners are not doing it. This is the reply I got when I personally emailed the owner of one of the plugins.

I think the niche of profiting from chrome extension might be alittle harder than for example having a software

ATTENTION: No, they are NOT OPEN-SOURCE. Yes, you can look at the source, but actually refusing it may get you into legal trouble. What the SO link actually says it that the source can be looked at. Not that they are FOSS

Thanks for the idea, Darko !

nice article! my ask is this: how does copyright work here? someone would be working on an old code by somebody else and earning money off of it

This is a good approach, but it certainly can't be a direct copy of the original plugin, and more innovation is needed

I looked at the extensions you gave as examples and I don't see any notification.

It's a great opportunity I have already built 2 extensions on Chrome and have got decent visibility. Decided to offer Chrome extension development as a service as well. This is going to be a boost

Great news to me as an extension developer. If anyone interested in building their extension please ping me

"Big changes are coming to the Chrome Extension Store! With Google phasing out Manifest Version 2 extensions, there's a huge opportunity for bootstrapped founders to step in. By updating popular extensions to Manifest V3, you can tap into a market that's about to lose many existing players. Time to get coding and seize the moment!

what a timely post! i'm building a chrome extension to help web developers intercept network requests and modify the responses. check me out at @joeyjiron06 on X / twitter

Google is phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in favor of Manifest V3. Popular extensions at risk of removal by the end of 2024 offer an opportunity for founders to develop updated V3 versions. For more details, read Google’s blog post What's happening in Chrome extensions?.

There are several issues to just updating the manifest and/or making minor changes to the code, and uploading them as is.

1. Usage: Who is ever using these extensions? I’d assume that any decently popular extensions are well maintained, or else no one will use them anyway. Isn’t it?

2. Copyright: How does the copyright look like - in the old and the new extension?

3. License: What’s the license under which the extension was published? Did you make any changes to that, or does the license allow you to clone and modify?

4. Attribution: Did you attribute your extension to previous developer well enough?

5. Flagged by Store: Google / Chrome store has advanced tooling to detect extensions with over X% of code duplication, and it’s highly likely that the extension gets flagged as "copy".

It can take substantial effort to make your extension as a "true alternate".

This is best idea but very workable for anyone

<p>This is a golden opportunity for bootstrapped founders! With many popular Chrome extensions set to be phased out, creating Manifest v3 versions can open new doors. Use tools like Claude or ChatGPT to refactor code and capitalize on Google's push for upgrades. Perfect time to innovate and thrive! 🚀 For saving money, check out thebonuskaartah .nl for Bonuskaart AH benefits. #ChromeExtensions #ManifestV3 #Bootstrapping</p>

4o

nice!

This post is mostly hype, encouraging those with no prior intentions to get into browser extensions to jump in.

I would be really interested to see where are the valid examples of profitable extensions that are about to expire?

Oh no! It's disappointing to hear that Google is removing some of my regularly used extensions.

Productivity Owl and Decreased Productivity do not have those notices for me. They seem fine.

Do you have any examples which are actually v2?

Any extension which is generating recurring revenue would surely have active maintenance, and if this is super simple I.e. Use GPT and it’s easy, the maintainer who is earning revenue would do that easily and have vested interest in doing so, no?

I can’t see many valid examples that you mentioned.

Given the impending removal of Manifest v2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store, what strategies would you recommend for bootstrapped founders to effectively promote their newly upgraded Manifest v3 extensions and capture the user base of deprecated extensions?

This is a good idea, didnt know chrome extensions are open source, but cant the dev of these soon-to-expire app from just upgrade?

This is a clever idea. Sharing it!

This is an excellent opportunity! To be able to move quickly and capitalise on this without wasting time building a billing system, I would recommend my Chrome extension billing platform - BrowserBill. You can literally start accepting payments in 5 minutes, we have step-by-step tutorials on how to set it up as well as example code that you can use.

I've been saying this for a while, Chrome extensions are an underappreciated niche, especially with many expiring: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/google-is-deprecating-thousands-of-extensions-which-means-tons-of-juicy-product-opportunities-b700b527d3

Browser extension are also a good way to start indie hacking: they're easy and free to create and publish, and have chrome store distribution. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-browser-extensions-are-a-good-way-to-start-indie-hacking-d534627540

The only pain in the butt was adding payments to them, but I made [a service](https://extensionpay.com/) that does that and now use it in my own extensions and it's super easy.

Nice opportunitty you saw there. Thanks for sharing that opportunity. My question here would be how to monetize with this kind of product. Isnt the ticket pretty low? I understand you can manage multiple chrome extensions at once, but at least in my social circle, i havent heard of a lot of people who actually purchased a chrome extension. Any thoughts on this?

Great read! Looking forward to the next!

Thank you, really useful.
Waiting for the part 2 of your Post "API arbitrage: How to quickly
test hundreds of product ideas" where you mention this "Part 2 of this post will focus on how to market your API."