[ytx]

Also there's not much practical defense to an unscrupulous extension author "exiting" with an under-the-table password transfer or "oops we got hacked" to a shady buyer.

<tinfoil hat> One could imagine a nefarious state actor offering the author of e.g. uBlock $XX million to get access to a lot of browsers. Not sure about the economics, but more niche extensions could probably be targeted for a lot cheaper.

[usrusr]

True, but at least it would require the exiting party to not have any illusions about what they are doing. I'd be surprised to hear that most extension takeover bids are open about their plans.

[Uehreka]

My guess is that most extension takeovers happen because the developer was making no money from the extension, not a lot of money at their dayjob, maintaining the extension was sucking up all their free time and maybe they also got an unexpected bill or were hurting for cash.

Not that those are good reasons to sell out your users, but they’re the kinds of circumstances that you can easily imagine happening.

[dankwizard]

uBlock countered that they wanted minimum $XXX and we pulled out.