Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

Late last year the popular Chrome extension Honey (owned by PayPal) was revealed for employing a few shady tactics, and the extension has since lost around 4 million users on Google’s browser alone. To recap the situation thus far, Honey has amassed millions of users over the past several years on the promise of finding coupon codes for various online stores. The free extension saw wide advertisements and was eventually purchased by PayPal in 2020 for $4 billion. In December 2024, a video on YouTube by the channel MegaLag exposed Honey for two shady practices. The first was how the extension took advantage of affiliate codes. Honey has always used affiliate programs to subsidize its service, but the video revealed that the extension would hijack these programs – removing affiliate codes from other refferers such as online creators and website – even if it didn’t have coupon codes or cash back to offer in return. The practice was working behind the scenes with businesses to control wh ... Read full article.