Installing & Updating Chome Extensions in China

Question

Given the crackdown on VPNs in China, I was wondering if there is a user-friendly way of allowing Chinese users to install and update Chrome web extensions?

Distributing the CRX of the extension for users to install manually, as others have suggested, is tolerable (though not ideal), but I would particularly like to avoid the requirement for users to re-install the extension whenever an update is available.

As far as I can tell from the docs, it is not possible to publish an extension in the Web Store with an "update_url" parameter in the manifest that doesn't point to https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx. Is there any way of distributing an external Chrome extension to these users with a private "update_url"that will allow auto-updates?

Edit

I have read the relevant documentation on alternative distribution methods/hosting/packaging etc that seem to suggest that https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx is the only valid update URL. However, since there are a large number of Chrome users in China I am curious if there is a viable solution to the problem of distributing extensions and updates to them - this seems like quite an important issue and it's one that, as far as I can tell, is not explicitly addressed in the docs.

Answer 1

As far as official docs go, you have Alternative Extension Distribution Options:

All Chrome extensions must be distributed either directly from the Chrome Web Store, using inline installation, or using the mechanisms described below. Failure to comply with one of these distribution methods constitutes a violation of the Chrome extension policy and may result in the extension and/or the software distributing it to be flagged as unwanted software.

Usually, users install their own extensions from the Chrome Web Store or some other site via inline installation. But sometimes you might want an extension to be installed via other means. Here are two typical cases: