Chrome Extensions Will Only Be Available Through Web Store
As of early last year, and as first announced in late 2013, Chrome extensions had to be on the Chrome Web Store in order to be downloaded — for Windows users, that is. The move was an effort to improve security by preventing malicious extensions from being downloaded from some random web location and installed. Google says that it saw a lot of success with this, and so it will be extending its scope in the near future. In doing so, Chrome may be more secure for all.
According to Google, it saw a 75-percent decrease in how many customer support help requests it got regarding getting unwanted extensions to uninstall. That's a substantial decrease, and points toward the change being an effective measure to keep one's browser more secure.
Because of this success, Google says it is going to expand this same protective measure to all of its Windows and Mac users in the future. The change will be made "in the coming months". In addition, and because of some negative it saw by not enforcing the policy on the Windows developer channel, the policy will go into effect for all Windows channels as of today.
Those on Mac will find the change going into effect starting in this upcoming July. Developers needn't worry, however, because there will still be support for local extension installs, as well as installs via the Enterprise policy. For the average use, this means you'll just need to head into the Chrome Web Store to gets your extensions from now on.
SOURCE: Chromium Blog