- Last year, the browser extension Honey got caught up in controversy over how it took affiliate revenue away from creators.
- Instead of only taking credit when it saved users money, Honey attempted to use its own affiliate ID for all sales.
- Google is now updating Chrome extension affiliate ad policies to explicitly forbid this practice.
What’s more alluring than the promise of free money? PayPal’s Honey browser extension may not have outright paid you to use it, but what it offered sounded like the next best thing, scrounging the web for the best coupon codes to save you as much money as possible every time you bought something online. While that looked great on face value, it emerged late last year that Honey was replacing affiliate codes with its own, and in the process harming the very creators who had been promoting it so heavily. As the fallout from that scandal continues, Google is taking steps to prevent anything like it from happening again.
One of the big ways that creators generate income is through affiliate links, which let companies share a portion of their revenue with the people who send consumer traffic their way. This is often accomplished with the help of unique identifiers and cookies. One problem with this system is that only one party can get credit for a sale.