As Google announced late last year, the company is making things difficult for Chrome Extensions installed outside of the Chrome Web Store. Any Chrome extension installed directly from a website or as part of a program install will be remotely disabled.

Google is looking to crack down on malicious extensions, which have increasingly become the preferred attack vector against Chrome users. While installing a program, it's easy for developers to include an unwanted Chrome extension that injects ads into webpages or hijacks search queries.

Google is trying to put a stop to malicious extensions without hurting legitimate local extension use cases. Local installs can still be performed by enabling "Developer mode" from the extensions screen, and installs via Enterprise policy are still supported. Websites or programs that want to include a Chrome extension can use the inline installation feature, which pops up a box from the Chrome Web Store asking users if they want to install the extension. Now Google just needs to do a better job of policing its extension store and, in theory, malicious extensions should be reduced.

Strangely, this change is only happening on Windows. Users on other operating systems will still be able to install local extensions without having to click the developer checkbox. Apparently program installs for those OSes can be trusted.