I noticed a new API in the Chrome docs recently called chrome.webstore. The documentation is minimal and I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to do.
What I hope it does is to let me do is do an inline install of another chrome webstore application, kind of like what’s described here. So if I wanted my application to have a complementary part that isn’t possible with optional permissions (e.g. replacing the new tab page), I could let them easily install another extension.
Unfortunately I can’t really test this because I don’t have an extension in the webstore yet, and I don’t think I can use a random extension because it verified the link on the back-end.
This API lets you install an extension inside another page that isn’t through the Webstore directly.
More info here: https://developers.google.com/chrome/web-store/docs/inline_installation