He addresses this point specifically in his post ... developing it as an extension would reduce the features he can support, and further entrench it in google's walled garden (since he'd have to publish it on the chrome store).
I don't have much more context in this person's project than anyone else, but your response is kind of the point, one vendor has too much power because they can't be expected to support any kind of innovative ecosystem; yeah, that's not a great state of affairs, and begins to echo/suggest anti-competitive practices (whether on purpose, or just as a function of their size)
Worse still, if this offers an enhanced interface or "unwanted" options over YouTube, it's likely the extension itself may well not make it into the store. To make matters worse is side-loading of extensions is pretty much a non-starter for Chrome now that dev-mode is a nag screen on each start (at least last time I used it).
I had a couple side loaded extensions, and the nag got me to do what google wanted, stop using them altogether.
Wouldn't a WebExtensions get you further out of the walled garden? Electron you're stuck with Blink where WebExtensions work with Gecko and Webkit as well.
Yes, but he seems to be saying he wants the wide distribution that comes from being on the dominant browser without being in the "walled garden" of the Chrome store, since the other browsers have vanishing market share.
I don't have much more context in this person's project than anyone else, but your response is kind of the point, one vendor has too much power because they can't be expected to support any kind of innovative ecosystem; yeah, that's not a great state of affairs, and begins to echo/suggest anti-competitive practices (whether on purpose, or just as a function of their size)