We have a Google Chrome extension designed for internal corporate use. Until now, it has been deployed using the GPO, and it worked fine until Chrome 33 appeared. Now the extension is not displayed in the Extensions list and is inactive: "(has the deployment / installation process changed from Chrome 33 for the GPO ? Do we need to do something else now or how to deploy the extension using the GPO in the world after Chrome 33?
We install using the GPO, as described here (section "Preinstall through Group Policy") and detailed here . We install the Group Policy objects ExtensionInstallForcelist , ExtensionInstallWhitelist and ExtensionInstallSources .
Our extension and our updated xml file are not hosted on the Chrome Web Store. Planned changes to Chrome 33 (to protect users from malicious extensions) that force extensions to be in the Chrome Web Store, , but from all the documentation we can find, this should not apply to the extensions installed by the GPO. as described by http://www.chromium.org/developers/extensions-deployment-faq :
Users can only install extensions hosted on the Chrome Web Store, except for installation through corporate policies or developer mode.
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What are the supported deployment options for extensions after this change? ... For enterprises, continue to support Group Policy to install extensions, no matter where the extensions are located. Note that the user computer must join the domain for Group Policy to improve efficiency .
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Extensions that were previously installed but not hosted on the Chrome Web Store will be hard-disabled (that is, the user cannot enable these extensions again), except for installation through enterprise policy or developer mode.
and http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from-malicious.html :
It’s good to continue to support local extensions during the development process and also installs using enterprise policies, and Chrome applications will also continue to be supported normally.
As soon as users upgraded to Chrome 33, the extension disappeared, so it seems that something has changed regarding the deployment of GPOs, but I do not see anything in the documents about this change (or, obviously, how to fix my deployment).
We cannot post to the Chrome Web Store because our extension uses the NPAPI component, which is no longer allowed for new Chrome Web Store extensions. There have been significant efforts related to the transition to another architecture that does not use NPAPI, so that there is no short-term resolution (although it is planned for the medium term). However, we tried to remove the NPAPI component in order to check whether Chrome 33 is not pleasant, and it seems that this is not related to this. We tried using https only in the urls, also does not work.
May be related to Problem 346386
Thanks for any suggestions!