Mohamed Mansour created some of the most widely used extensions for Google+, including Extended Share, which currently boasts more than 83,000 users. Shortly after the changes to Google+ went live, Mansour posted a long comment to his profile page entitled, "Thank you Google for breaking all my apps and extensions without warning!"

Mansour emphasized that his objection was not that Google made the changes. In fact, he said he liked the new interface. Rather, he objected to Google's failure to release a preview to give developers time to modify their apps and extensions.

"My whole point is when you send an update that major, make sure you have a transition period," Mansour said. "Let them break all the extensions, I don't mind. If there was a transition period, I could take my time, I could let people help me, I could decide whether to support it or not support it."

Google+ has only a rudimentary , so Mansour has essentially reverse-engineered the site to create Chrome extensions that give it additional functionality. In fact, one of Mansour's contributions to the platform was a mock-up API for others to use.

While other developers were sympathetic with Mansour's frustration, several of them noted the inherent risk of developing without the assurance of a stable API.