Obviously there's no net win, given that TFA is talking about extensions distributed on Chrome's Web Store, infecting over 130000 users before it was banned.
That kind of proves the walled garden is pretty ineffective, the only accomplishment being the lock-in of users to Google's Web Store as the sole distribution mechanism, thus keeping Chrome a proprietary platform, in spite of the open-source nature of its code.
The only real advantage of the web store is the ability to uninstall banned extensions. But that could have been accomplished just as well by digital signing of the distributed packages.
That kind of proves the walled garden is pretty ineffective, the only accomplishment being the lock-in of users to Google's Web Store as the sole distribution mechanism, thus keeping Chrome a proprietary platform, in spite of the open-source nature of its code.
The only real advantage of the web store is the ability to uninstall banned extensions. But that could have been accomplished just as well by digital signing of the distributed packages.