Collusion for Chrome

Disclaimer: Half my blogging these days, it’d seem, has to do with usage stats. What can I say, I’m obsessed with numbers and have been since I could reel off the career pitching and hitting lines of “Three Finger” Brown and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson as a kid. I should also note that all the usage stats come from Google and Mozilla (not us!) but are nonetheless anonymous, to the best of my knowledge.

I mentioned (here, too) that, five days post launch, Collusion for Chrome had scored 20,000 installs, a 5-star rating, 10,000 video views, and 98% video likes. After a whole week, we landed on some nice, (almost) round numbers:

• 29,440 installs
• a 5-star rating
• 15,586 video views
• 99% video likes

And we racked up some sweet press coverage:

• The Verge
• Lifehacker
• Mashable
• Gizmodo

If you’ve already added or reviewed Collusion for Chrome, thank you. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for! You can likewise watch the progress of or contribute to the (open-source) project.

Frictionless

Last week, Nik Cubrilovic and I put out a side project called Frictionless. Frictionless is a browser extension that lets you read articles shared on Facebook without being nagged to add newfangled social-reader apps.

Ironically (I live in constant fear of misusing this word), the project started with a Facebook status update and comment thread then was finished in a few days over Facebook chat. We originally named the extension Frictionless Clicking but got scooped by TechCrunch, who chopped off the “Clicking”. We adopted the truncated name.

Here are a couple more articles that describe Frictionless better than I — and require no apps to read:

• Frictionless Facebook extension lets you bypass app installers when reading news
• Google Chrome extension lets you bypass Facebook news apps

The Secret History of Facebook Disconnect

I’ve been meaning to tell the origin story of Facebook Disconnect for a while now. The extension’s first birthday gave me an excuse to. This post is republished from the shiny, new Disconnect blog.

Exactly one year ago, I noticed a virus infecting the web. Facebook widgets, mostly Like buttons, were popping up everywhere — alongside the articles I read, the music I listened to, the videos I watched. Worse, Facebook was (and is) serving these widgets off the same domain (facebook.com) as their login cookies.

Being a tracking aficionado (I developed DoubleClick’s mobile ad server and the, kludgy, precursor to Google’s AdWords API), I recognized Facebook’s strategy — collecting user browsing habits to sell to advertisers.

That night, I spent two hours writing 53 lines of JSON and JavaScript (and two more hours making a Ghostbusters-inspired logo) to inoculate my browser. I called the Chrome extension, which works by stopping the flow of personal data from third-party sites to Facebook, Facebook Disconnect.

I’d done side projects before, including another extension that had 37 users. But I was thinking big this time. I imagined Facebook Disconnect could have 50 users.

I was off by three orders of magnitude and change.

Today, Facebook Disconnect has over 150,000 weekly users. And the extension has been Chrome only, till now.

To celebrate Facebook Disconnect’s birthday, we’ve created versions for Firefox and Safari and open-sourced the code as usual!

fear Google

Behold this awesome sticker I found last week at TechCrunch Disrupt:

Or did the sticker find me?

Google — Clueless or Misleading?

Disconnect was covered by the Wall Street Journal (blog) today (note to future Disconnect scribes: this underline thing is called a hyperlink). The post features the work of one of Google’s master bunko artists, whom I’d like to debunk for you:

Google spokesman Chris Gaither declined to comment on Disconnect, but said that users can also turn off search personalization by removing their Web history. (Instructions are here.)

The change Google suggests is strictly cosmetic — their search results will be displayed differently (i.e., not personalized), but your queries and cookies will still be logged by them and kept for 18 months.

Disconnect: Month One

On Disconnect’s one-month birthday, I thought I’d share some usage bits and bobs. Here’s a performance snapshot from Monday — Disconnect is now the 112th most popular and 67th highest rated of the 11,000-odd extensions and themes in the Chrome extension gallery and Facebook Disconnect, the 84th most popular and 10th highest rated (the user and install data is anonymous and collected by the extension system not the extensions themselves):

More importantly, commenter Chris dug up this mind-blowing video about Facebook Disconnect (the Facebook Blocker extension noted in the video hides rather than blocks Facebook resources so isn’t a suitable privacy-protecting substitute for Facebook Disconnect on Firefox or Safari):

100,000 Disconnect’ers

Sometime today, Disconnect and Facebook Disconnect combined got their 100,000th active user on Chrome. Disconnect was released exactly one week ago and had 25,170 users as of yesterday. Facebook Disconnect was released exactly two months ago and had 74,417 users.

That the extensions, with no viral features, marketing, or PR (I just gave TechCrunch an exclusive preview of Disconnect), are now being run by 100,000 people each week is a clear message to Facebook, Google, and every other Internet company that they can’t take our data without our permission anymore.

Meet Disconnect

My 2,686th, and Last, Day at Google

I left Google a month back (and have been doing a little hacking since). I’m told posting your farewell email is all the rage, so here goes:

From: Brian Kennish <bkennish@google.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 12:15 PM
Subject: My 2,686th, and Last, Day at Google


(Some of those were Saturdays, Sundays, and days I was pretending to be sick.)

Seven years, six jobs, four teams, three offices, and two coasts later, I’m turning in my Google badge. I’ve been getting asked for three-and-a-half years, “Why are you still here?” The answer was simple: devrel.

I’m certain the developer-relations job and team are the best things about Google. I can finally admit: I can’t believe you can get paid to help startups and independent developers build cool stuff — I’d do so for free. The people on this team and those we work closely with are amazingly talented and dedicated and I’m feeling lucky I got to learn from many of you. Most of all, I want to thank Mike for turning this ragtag bunch of misfits into an important and respected part of Google. We’ve come a long way and I don’t know another manager who would’ve gotten us so far.

I wish I could say goodbye to everyone and have hardly had a chance to to anyone. But if I linger, I might end up changing my mind. Please stay in touch. You can get a hold of me by replying-all to this message (my personal address is in the “To:” field). And I’m pretty easy to find on the web now — a year and a half of developer advocacy and I’ve totally pwned the other three Brian Kennishes in Google search results.

Boo! Facebook Disconnect’s Scary Install Dialog

It’s Halloween, a good time to answer a frequently asked question about this scary confirmation box that pops up when you install Facebook Disconnect:

Google Chrome Extensions, like all installable software, can potentially do bad things and the extension gallery displays accordingly dire warning messages. Unlike compiled programs, though, extensions let you easily view their (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) source code to make sure they don’t actually do anything malicious.

Facebook Disconnect triggers a warning because the extension has to inject JavaScript into every page you browse to disable the component Facebook links. There are three ways to get a packaged extension’s code (a topic worthy of its own post), but you can just look in my repository since I’ve open-sourced Facebook Disconnect.

Update (December 3, 2010): If you’d rather take my word for it than read my code — Facebook Disconnect doesn’t store your personal data and never will, unless you opt in to anonymously provide data for diagnostic purposes in the future.

Facebook Disconnect Logo

I’ll have more to say about the making of and response to the Facebook Disconnect extension later. For now, I’m dumping all different sizes of the logo I made for you to post. These images are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (the same license Creative Commons marks their own work with).

Spread the word!

140 x 140:

128 x 128:

64 x 64:

48 x 48:

32 x 32:

16 x 16:

HTML5 Game Jam in 20 Pictures

Last weekend, we ran Google’s first-ever game jam in the Netherlands (with Spil Games) and San Francisco. We put food, beer, and developers in and fun games came out. Here’s a look at the sausage being made in San Francisco:

Mobile Lawsuit T-Shirt

George Kokkinidis made an awesome infographic yesterday, which shows who’s suing who for infringing their mobile patents. Since I’m speaking on a panel at the CTIA wireless conference tomorrow, I turned George’s chart into a shirt to wear there:

P.S. You can pretty much calculate how screwed (or not) a company is using the chart. Here’s an equation to do so:

E.g., Kodak is:

100% screwed.

Almost Resignation Letters on TechCrunch

I thought TechCrunch’s acquisition by AOL was a Bad Thing, for pretty much everybody involved — the readers, the writers, the startups, AOL. Paul Carr voices what must be the prevailing feeling among his peers: “Like most serious writers, I’ve always dreamed of working for AOL.”

So I can’t say I’m surprised by the ha-ha-only-serious letters of resignation that have been popping up on the site since. Already, three of TechCrunch’s dozen staff writers have posted all-but-goodbyes:

• “I Can’t Work Under These Conditions :-)” — Michael Arrington
• “NSFAOL: Highlights From Yesterday’s Secret ‘Welcome To AOL’ Meeting” — Paul Carr
• “If Web 1.0’s Kryptonite Was the Bust, Web 2.0 Kryptonite Was the Grind” — Sarah Lacy

Of Fail Whales and Other Fine Feathered Friends

(OK, so whales don’t have feathers. What are you a fucking marine biologist?)

Facebook introduced their error page to the world yesterday and they certainly set a new standard among social networks for animal-themed whimsy.

First, Twitter threw down the gauntlet:

Then, Digg:

And now, Facebook:

Shouldn’t Hulu Be Saying “Congratulations”?

As in, “Congratulations, we’re unable to load a message from our sponsors!”

Upcoming Speaking Gigs

I'm giving a few talks in the next couple weeks. Here are my session titles and abstracts, the where and when, and my speaker bio:

• Extensions5: Advanced Google Chrome Extensions with HTML5
  Google DevFest Japan
  March 11th

  A deep dive into advanced techniques for developing extensions — like communicating within and between extensions, effectively injecting content, and integrating HTML5 features.

  More Info

• HTML5 101
  South by Southwest Interactive
  March 14th and 15th

  An overview of the latest HTML, CSS, and JavaScript features being built into modern browsers — including audio, video, typography, animation, notifications, and more.

  More Info

• Advanced Google Chrome Extensions
  South by Southwest Interactive
  March 14th

  [See above.]

  More Info

• Brian Kennish was the first support engineer at Google back when the AdWords API was launched. Since then, he's helped launch four more Google developer products — gadget ads, the Analytics API, Wave, and Chrome Extensions. Brian is currently a developer advocate for Google Chrome.

Since the Google Buzz Logo Looks Like a Pie Chart …

What We Learned about Jimmy Wales in the Last Week

1. He's a randy Randian (source: Valleywag).
2. He stinks (source: eBay).
3. He steals money from college kids to pay for happy endings and home appliances (source: All's Wool that Ends Wool).

New Google Reader UI?

I don't know, I think I like the old one better.