Meanwhile, after taking feedback and making improvements, the Chrome Web Store’s new developer dashboard is now the default when you directly navigate or bookmark it, and when visiting from Settings > Developer Dashboard.A couple weeks back you may have seen a lot of news coverage about a Chrome extension that, when installed, replaces all instances of the word ‘millennials’ on the webpages you visit with ‘snake people’. This measure and requiring a payment method on file is likely intended to increase the barrier to publishing abusive extensions anywhere on the web. There is no change for developers that already have Chrome Web Store listings, while new ones have to start off by paying the fee. Note: This will look like a new developer registration flow, but all that’s required is to pay the fee and complete the flow. If you have published to private domain or to trusted testers, but not to the public, you will now need to pay the registration fee. This applies to those that only release extensions to private domains and trusted testers. Registered developers that have never published publicly will now have to pay the fee before they can access the CWS developer dashboard. Previously, this payment was only required when making an item available to the public.

The biggest change sees Google charge the $5 registration fee to become a Chrome Web Store developer immediately. There’s a new default dashboard and up-front registration fee likely aimed at combating spam. Google today announced “two significant changes” to the Chrome Web Store for extension developers.

Google chrome web store dashboard