Chrome’s auto-update forces you to trust the author of any extension you install for as long as you use the extension. Google’s “Trustworthy by default” effort doesn’t change this model since it still provides no guarantees. This works for some extensions backed by companies (e.g. Adblock), but it doesn’t work for extensions that add simple functionality.
For small extensions that add basic browser functionality (e.g. reorder tabs, enable autocomplete), I wish Google would enable users to verify open-source extensions. I trust the version of the code that I have reviewed on github. I do not trust that the kid who wrote this extension won’t go rogue and upload a malicious version in a future autoupdated release. So the only way I can verify the code that I run is to install it from the Chrome Web Store, copy the code and verify it, uninstall the Chrome Web Store version, and then load the unpacked extension (or even publish my own copy of it to the Chrome Web Store). This is pretty cumbersome.
For small extensions that add basic browser functionality (e.g. reorder tabs, enable autocomplete), I wish Google would enable users to verify open-source extensions. I trust the version of the code that I have reviewed on github. I do not trust that the kid who wrote this extension won’t go rogue and upload a malicious version in a future autoupdated release. So the only way I can verify the code that I run is to install it from the Chrome Web Store, copy the code and verify it, uninstall the Chrome Web Store version, and then load the unpacked extension (or even publish my own copy of it to the Chrome Web Store). This is pretty cumbersome.