20 ms·

“We plan to hide ‘https’ scheme and subdomain ‘www’ in Chrome omnibox in M76”

230 points by PieUser 7y ago

dusted 7y ago
yeah, whatever, it's too late anyway.
lucasyvas 7y ago
This hurts younger generations. They will become more and more oblivious to how things work. They will be forced to "trust" someone that knows better instead of having the knowledge to decide themselves. For those that become engineers, it will take even longer to untrain all the handholding they've had to endure. If the web is apparently so damn complicated maybe we should rebuild it to be "simpler" instead of hiding it how it works. I'd prefer to leave it exactly how it is until there is a clear reason to revisit the design.
Zekio 7y ago
Gotta say I'm not a fan of browser hiding information from the user
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  That was my first instinct as well but, you know, at some point if you don't know what it means and you aren't going to bother to find out, extra information is just noise. Green locks and red slashes are probably enough.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    That's bullshit IMO, people learn all sorts of complicated stuff in video games through embedded tutorials. There's no reason a browser couldn't do the same thing.
cloud_thrasher 7y ago
On the chrome://flags page, these prefs are found under #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme / #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-trivial-subdomains / #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-path-query-and-ref / #omnibox-ui-one-click-unelide
- la_barba 7y ago
  That's the nerd pacifier. They will remove those flags eventually as they have always done.
masswerk 7y ago
Hm, hiding the protocol and the host part in the address – what next, hiding the domain? However, the path is hidden already, what's left then? Seriously speaking: If browsers are simplifying the URI scheme for the alleged benefit of users, how do we expect these users to know anything about addresses? Isn't this rather undermining security than enhancing it? Highlighting significant parts may be preferable to hiding those deemed insignificant. Moreover, regarding https, I personally prefer positive affirmation over lack of warning. For me, this worked best for desktop browsers with the padlock icon (and, before this, the key icon) shown together with a display of link targets in a status bar as a separate, reserved area. (While allowing pages to overwrite `window.status` was certainly not a good idea.) A consistent display of the authority issuing the certificate of the current page in a status bar like this may be also nice. I'm not convinced that less but more opaque information is the way to go. Dedicating 20 vertical pixels of virtual real estate to security relevant information may be worth it. It may be also easier to parse than an overloaded omnnibox/location/search/navigation/security/menu bar. Cutting down any information which is displayed too densely right from the beginning won't help the issue. How many bits of information are there in this "everything bar"? Yes, there's still a bit of grouping left, mainly by spacing, but color is mostly gone as a signal in order to make the information density bearable. So users will be applying quite an amount of selectivity when parsing this display, by this inevitably missing relevant information. (That this densely combined display is rather homogenous both for esthetics and acceptance just aggravates the need for selective parsing, which is likely to become a habit.) "We'll pre-filter this for you" isn't addressing the problem, it's rather "living with the outcome". Edit: A legitimate reason for redacting the host name are extensive names, crafted to exceed the space available in the location display in order to deceive users regarding the identity of the host. Here, abbreviating by an ellipsis (compare text-overflow: ellipsis) in order to fully display the domain may be a way to go. -- P.S.: What's the general lesson taught by such redactions by the browser vendor? That it is OK to ignore these things, as they are truly irrelevant? (Must be without significance, since Google told me so?)
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  > Seriously speaking: If browsers are simplifying the URI scheme for the alleged benefit of users, how do we expect these users to know anything about addresses? Isn't this rather undermining security than enhancing it? Users already don't know anything about addresses. Even security professionals botch the "look at some visual indicator of connection security" all the time (see SSLStrip). As a security feature the URL bar is almost entirely useless for the huge majority of users. URL bars also don't really tell you where your content is coming from. Iframes don't have URL bars. All that javascript downloaded from somewhere when the page loaded doesn't have a URL bar. The web isn't made of uniquely identifiable documents anymore.
jazzyjackson 7y ago
The omnibox never seemed like a crowded part of the interface, did they do any kind of user testing where they found people were confused or annoyed by this 'https://www' https://www' prefix? Or is this just one team's sense of aesthetic ?
- bencollier49 7y ago
  People who don't understand URLs will use search to find sites. Obviously I've no clue why Google would be motivated to encourage that behaviour. Must be their sense of aesthetic.
  - comex 7y ago
    So your claim is that simplifying URLs, which on its face seems like an attempt to make them easier to understand, is secretly intended to make them hard to understand? Forgive me for being skeptical.
    - Santosh83 7y ago
      Hiding behind more clicks is not always simplifying. URLs are central to the Web as we know it. Hiding important portions of it will only foster ignorance of the structure of Web in current and future users. What you don't know, you cannot use/employ. It becomes "hard to understand."
    - ezrast 7y ago
      I don't doubt that Googlers believe this is a useful change, but that belief is borne out of their own vested interest in deprecating traditional web navigation. That's really the best light you can put it in, considering how utterly user-hostile this decision is.
      - comex 7y ago
        The best light you can put it in is that removing unnecessary parts of the URL makes it easier for less advanced users to understand what the URL consists of, helping them use "traditional web navigation". To be fair, Google has previously experimented with hiding the entire path part of the URL, which does hinder URL-based navigation by making the displayed text unusable as a URL. However, that's different from this change, where typing the displayed text into a browser's URL bar would normally get you to the same page (unless the site is configured strangely).
skybrian 7y ago
On Chrome for Android, the URL is not editable unless you press an edit button, which displays a text box. I imagine this is another step in that direction, and if you click "edit", the text box still shows the whole thing. Compare with how email headers work in gmail. You don't see email addresses anymore by default, but there's a dropdown that shows them.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Chipping away at open standards one piece at a time.
- dpau 7y ago
  or email to/from/cc in ios mail, where only the person's name is shown. clicking on the name displays a contact card. for people with multiple addresses, there's no way to tell which address is being used.
  - rusk 7y ago
    Yeah this is incredibly stupid. If you have a contact with more than one number trying to call you, the only way to know which number they called u from is the little accent to indicate recently used in their contact card. God knows what happens if they tried to call you from more than one number ...
- rudiv 7y ago
  Are you sure this is the case for everyone? On my two android devices, tapping on the address bar still opens the keyboard for direct editing of the URL. I've never seen the behavior you're describing on Chrome for Android, although I concede it may be geofenced or something of the like.
  - kuschku 7y ago
    This is what it shows for me on latest Chrome when clicking the address bar while on Wikipedia: https://i.k8r.eu/WIPPrQ.png https://i.k8r.eu/WIPPrQ.png You have to press edit for it to put the address back into the input field
skybrian 7y ago
It seems this change hasn't rolled out on Chrome 76 on a Mac. I don't see any change. (I don't have it on Android yet.)
duskwuff 7y ago
Didn't we already go through this last year? https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-69-kills-off-www-in-urls-heres-why-googles-move-has-made-people-angry/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-69-kills-off-www-in-url...
- PieUser 7y ago
  They delayed the rollout after people spoke out against it: "In Chrome M69, we rolled out a change to hide special-case subdomains “www” and “m” in the Chrome omnibox. After receiving community feedback about these changes, we have decided to roll back these changes in M69 on Chrome for Desktop and Android." I don't think there's any going back this time around...
bencollier49 7y ago
It increasingly grates on me that Google seem to want to ruin the internet using their browser monopoly in service of their ad revenue.
- clouddrover 7y ago
  Don't let it grate on you, just use Firefox. The only way you're going to influence their development direction from the outside is to choose a non-Chrome based alternative.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    In the 90s people used to bemoan Microsoft using their OS monopoly and force IE6 on everyone Many tech people don't seem to care about Google and the Chrome monopoly Maybe it was the same in the 90s, but the only tech people I knew were on usenet and slashdot, and thus it only seemed everyone was against Microsoft's behaviour. Either way, we know how bad that behaviour was
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      I think the reason they don't care is because if they don't have to work with it (their destandardization of HTML I believe) they can trivially find countless alternatives themselves. They aren't restricted.
  - asdernr 7y ago
    Please change my mind. Besides the 1% privacy gain and some more free RAM when using firefox over chrome. Which are the key/killer arguments for firefox, NOW? That chrome can become shit in the future is not to be discussed...
    - jddj 7y ago
      While it's better now in many ways, some of which you've already dismissed, the future matters now because our choices now effect our options tomorrow. In a way, with your browser choice you're effectively voting for the internet you want in the future. If that's Chrome and, despite the practical benefits of using Firefox, you trust Google above Mozilla to work in your best interests, then use Chrome.
Santosh83 7y ago
Industry wants you to open apps and click buttons and links, and not worry about such things as bothering with what the URL may be, or gasp, even typing in or editing your own URL. That's too complicated and dangerous for 'normal' users apparently according to them.
- supernes 7y ago
  Wondering how far they can take this. How long before we read that "Google will replace URLs with the Google search terms you can use to find the page you're viewing"
  - keanebean86 7y ago
    Didn't aol try this 20ish years ago?
    - teddyh 7y ago
      And CompuServe before them.
      - jbverschoor 7y ago
        Isn’t this how things usually work? * New stuff comes out -> niche * Some smart people want to simplify it, but theres too “magic”, and fades away * General public learns about the underlying tech or at least structure * Big adoption happens as people trust it * Some people want to make it “magic”/simple again, but therefore creating a black box Forward a few years, and the industry seems inaccessible for a long time * people figure out again how things work Medical, construction, tech, space, movies.. almost everything has this pattern
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    People mostly already do this organically, without any encouragement. The vast majority of users don't want to know about "URIs" or other technical details.
  - 7y ago
reilly3000 7y ago
Safari has been hiding protocol and path for years. I don't care for it, but I also don't think its a conspiracy to destroy the web as we know it.
- rusk 7y ago
  You can disable this behaviour, and its all right there when you go to click on it. Presume you mean on mac btw, cos I using safari on ios and I can see the full address right in front of me. No protocol spec but a lock icon at least
  - comex 7y ago
    The way Safari does it is a lot nicer UX. In Chrome, the URL scheme is always hidden, but if you press copy it magically copies the full URL to the clipboard – as opposed to the actual displayed text. In Safari, the URL scheme becomes visible once you click on the URL bar, so what you see is what you get. That said, I dislike the default behavior of hiding the entire path until you click, as opposed to just the URL scheme.
dazhbog 7y ago
Its all fine until you have to explain to your loved ones how to read domains and the difference between an email link with random-server-name.paypal.com vs. www.paypal.random-name.com If we remove meta data like this from everyday browsing maybe it will be harder for people to even grasp the idea of how domain names work?
- keymone 7y ago
  domain name is not metadata and the problem you're describing is more with mail clients and html emails than anybody else.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Telling people to look for https:// https:// as a way to indicate that they're secure isn't good enough. There's nothing stopping a malicious party applying an SSL certificate to www.paypal.random-name.com. Browsers need to inform users based on actual information that they have (eg the SSL cert, reports of malicious domains, etc) and display that to the user. Essentially Google know more about the state of a website than a user can learn from the domain alone, and they should display that to the user. Once that's happening the various parts of the domain are less important. The downside of this is that it increases Chrome users reliance on Google.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    So basically a brave new word where google will decide what is a good and a bad website. Great.
    - onion2k 7y ago
      My preferred solution would be an open API standard that companies could use to provide independent information about domains, that browsers could use to pull data about domains, and that companies who index the web could use to update whether or not they trust domains. That way anyone could set up as a source of information about whether or not a domain is trustworthy. I'm not in a position to actually do it though, and Google are (for themselves, without sharing the API), so for now that's the best we've got. Maybe someone who has the resources to compete with Google will step up.
eridius 7y ago
I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here. I don't see how this change is detrimental to the web or somehow good for Google. Hiding the "https://" https://" seems like a perfectly fine idea as long as there's a clear way to distinguish between https and http pages. Safari's done this for a long time; https pages display a tiny padlock icon and http pages display a much more prominent "Not Secure — " prefix (i.e. the obvious display is when you're insecure, which is the right way to go about things). Hiding "www" seems less meaningful. I'm not really sure what the motivation is there, beyond the fact that the "www" prefix is mostly just aesthetics. My best guess is they want the url to start with "google.com" instead of "www.google.com", except that's not helpful from a security standpoint at all and might be slightly detrimental, if it trains people that the very first word they encounter is the most important, as paypal.whatever.com is not in fact paypal. But a lot of domains already elide the "www" anyway. Of course, in both cases I am assuming that putting focus on the URL bar will display the full URL.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  >I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here It is a change made by Google and it also dares try to simplify things for non tech savvy users so it has to be evil !
  - penagwin 7y ago
    To me the problem is that it obscures the page URI, making it an unreliable source for exactly where you are. Whether this is a real concern for usual end users no I don't think so. It's mostly more annoying for the HN crowd who need to see it for development or are very security sensitive.
- davman 7y ago
  Its not always just aesthetic unfortunately. Try this shining example from British local government: http://www.manchester.gov.uk http://www.manchester.gov.uk vs http://manchester.gov.uk http://manchester.gov.uk
  - 7y ago
stojano 7y ago
again??
lousken 7y ago
So instead of fixing their tab interface which is terrible if you have hundreds of tabs they rather choose to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place, gj chrome team
keymone 7y ago
both changes are great. www must go, it's a remnant of the past, the sooner the better. protocol is not a detail that should be ever exposed to the end user, at least not in text form. visual cues "you're safe" or "your connection isn't secure" are much more effective.
- rusk 7y ago
  This of course presumes that the dns is only for www, which of course it isnt
  - keymone 7y ago
    could you elaborate please?
    - rusk 7y ago
      no, sorry
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  > www must go, it's a remnant of the past, the sooner the better. Which then is a thing for websites to do, not for browsers to lie about.
  - keymone 7y ago
    > not for browsers to lie about it's just like your opinion man. not showing redundant information is good. if you disagree where's your rant about browsers lying about port 80 by not showing it? if your point is that www.name.com can be different site from name.com - i disagree even more, this is a case of incompetent developers at name.com so redirect your rage accordingly :) > a thing for websites to do they'll do it eventually, doesn't mean browsers shouldn't be getting rid of redundancy.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
      > it's just like your opinion man. not showing redundant information is good. The host name is not redundant information. > if you disagree where's your rant about browsers lying about port 80 by not showing it? Why should I write idiotic rants? > if your point is that www.name.com can be different site from name.com - i disagree even more, this is a case of incompetent developers at name.com so redirect your rage accordingly :) Well, great that you disagree. Now, please do the work of changing the relevant standards instead of making yourself look like an idiot by calling people who read and follow standards "incompetent developers". > they'll do it eventually, doesn't mean browsers shouldn't be getting rid of redundancy. Which is not the topic of this disucssion.
amanzi 7y ago
Just use Firefox! And then install Firefox on your friends' and family's computers too, and set it as the default for them. Spread the word...
- HeavenBanned 7y ago
  Firefox is almost entirely funded by Google IIRC.
  - PudgePacket 7y ago
    Phrasing it like that is quite misleading.. Yes they receive money for having google.com as the default homepage if I remember correctly. The way you worded it makes it sound like Google controls them.
    - Avamander 7y ago
      It's misleading to claim Chrome/Google doesn't have an immense control over web standards and protocols.
      - jjulius 7y ago
        You do realize OP was simply referring to Google having direct control of Firefox financially, not via web standards, yeah? You're implying OP is saying something that they're not.
        Avamander 7y ago
        The comment I replied to tried to imply Google has little control over Firefox ("The way you worded it makes it sound like Google controls them."), the immense control is true, it doesn't matter what OP said in this situation.
- isostatic 7y ago
  Firefox has a nasty history of following chrome's choices
BluSyn 7y ago
I'll play devils advocate. I'm fine with this being default assuming there's an option for advanced users to disable it. 95% of Chrome users will not notice or care about this change, and in fact will make things simpler for them in the long run. Also, seriously people, ditch www. subdomains already. It's not 2002 anymore. I cringe so hard when I see that crap in print ads and billboards.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  There are legit reasons why you should use a www. sub domain: https://bjornjohansen.no/www-or-not https://bjornjohansen.no/www-or-not
  - Avamander 7y ago
    Quite a few of those "cookies can be read by third parties" things boil down to "we don't know how to use SameSite".
- robocat 7y ago
  > ditch www. subdomains already Sweet, unless you use any other subdomains for web pages, or want to in the future. Usually you don't want cookies for domain.com to affect api.donain.com, admin.domain.com, test.domain.com etc. I actually love www subdomains - the origin tells you it is a website.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    Exactly why don't you want your site's cookies to affect your site? Do you think perhaps you're abusing what cookies are meant to do?
  - pas 7y ago
    Separating api. and www. makes authentication messier (thus less secure). [At least I haven't seen a clear and good one yet.] And with HTTP/2 you don't have to worry about static stuff slowing down or crowding out API req-resp data.
  - 7y ago
sam_goody 7y ago
And this way you won't know if your page is AMP, or just a webpage (since amp follows www in things they are hiding). I strongly suspect that this (and the eventual goal of making the whole web hosted by Google) is actually the rationale behind the decision. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 Also, training the user to treat the URL as text, so that you search for domains (type "amazon" instead of "amazon.com"), is better for them. The "URL" bar is for Chrome also a search bar (and every domain you enter is sent to Google "for search suggestions").
- mtgx 7y ago
  Yes, I also believe this is the primary reason Google is doing this. They want to hide urls with referrer tracking, AMP URLs, and other such things from the user.
Boulth 7y ago
Hiding "www" subdomain looks like an ugly workaround for missing support for DNS SRV records in HTTP/browsers.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Good news on that front. To do a bunch of new things browser vendors want, they need to put more stuff into DNS. For example eSNI needs keys in DNS, and HTTP/3 (HTTP over QUIC, which is the new encrypted transport protocol) wants a way to discover HTTP/3 availability before connecting with TLS. So at IETF 105 last week there was stuff pinging around about the idea of a single new record, perhaps just for HTTP or perhaps more, that wraps all this stuff up, with all the SRV features too. The DPRIVE work is having the effect of reducing the pressure to not use DNS, because crappy DNS servers break all the time when you add new things, but DPRIVE servers are operated by people who actually know what they're doing so that isn't a risk, and eSNI in particular makes no sense without DPRIVE, so why not.
josteink 7y ago
So google wants to replace the URL in the URL bar with a URL which is semantically different. What could possibly go wrong? Seriously. What kind of incompetent, lazy people are working at Google these days? Because clearly nobody gave this any real thought.
nopacience 7y ago
Again google comes up with this. I think the google plan is: 1. hide the address bar from chrome 2. make users use google to search instead of using address bar directly 3. google will use AMP for every site of any type. Then google will serve as a proxy
buboard 7y ago
“Part of our scheme to introduce ads in the address bar”
peterbraden 7y ago
Chrome is getting more and more user hostile. At the moment you can't inspect a site's certificate without going into developer tools. Terrible decisions, the developers should be ashamed.
bitcurious 7y ago
Reads like folks at Chrome are just making work to have work because the senior leadership has no vision. Needs to be addressed before they burn through the goodwill they’ve built up.
duluca 7y ago
Sigh. Many new comers to web development learn by observing, this will take that away. Www and https handling requires explicit configuration. Unless the intent is to not let people type in www or http, but what happens when they do and it’s not handled correctly?
fortran77 7y ago
hiding www. seems like a bad idea.
pyentropy 7y ago
So apparently Google rolled out an update where they 'm.domain.com' turn into 'domain.com' in the omnibox. In what world is this acceptable? How can they assume that 'm.' always means mobile and 'www.' is the same as the root domain for all hosts? Let's assume that you have a blog platform offering subdomains for each user and 'm.blogplatform.com' is available. Now, any user can get that subdomain and impersonate the homepage because Emily from Chromium decided that eliding parts of the URL without any spec is a reasonable decision.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  Yes, that's why that change was rolled back.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but if you allow www.companyname.website, companyname.website, and m.companyname.website to be owned by different entities, your users are already being phished.
  - type0 7y ago
    simply not true, you are confusing different issues
  - rnotaro 7y ago
    Tumblr have a url scheme where subdomains are user-owned. https://m.tumblr.com/ https://m.tumblr.com/ != https://tumblr.com https://tumblr.com When they initially decided to hide the "m" subdomain, https://m.tumblr.com/ https://m.tumblr.com/ was shwon as tumblr.com. It's not the only website with that issue.
cannedslime 7y ago
Remove protocol? Sure an arguement could be made that showing it is redundant giving the lock symbol appears when HTTPS is enabled. But removing sub domains like m. and www. isn't really cool. I already hate the fact that chrome on mobile totally removes the URL when you focus the navbar, sucks if you want to go to some other subreddit etc.
Mindwipe 7y ago
What a toxic, user-hostile idea. The Chromium team desperately need new leadership.
logiclogic 7y ago
Google doing more evil again. Fuck everyone working for this company. The devils minions is what you are.
- dang 7y ago
  Could you please not break the site guidelines when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Communitivity 7y ago
Hiding the scheme is a dangerous path, because users then have to depend on browser specific indicators of https, or other secure schemes. I think it's a bad idea for that reason, and for another higher level reason. As a developer and sys admin before that I've always tried to assume my users are smart people and try to educate them about what they might not know, instead of assuming they are dumb and attempting to PICNIC-proof software/systems. I think hiding the scheme indicates an assumption that users are dumb and need to be told what to do. I've seen reporting on other indicators of this from Google over the last decade (e.g., Google Reader's sunset, Google+, working with China's censors, and others). FYI, PICNIC = Problem In Chair Not In Computer
- teddyh 7y ago
  > PICNIC I believe the more common term is “PEBKAC”: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PEBKAC.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PEBKAC.html
- Jwarder 7y ago
  > users then have to depend on browser specific indicators of https, or other secure schemes That's extra painful because browsers keep on changing what those indicators are.
ubermonkey 7y ago
This seems like a bad idea.
driverdan 7y ago
The worst part: > We've worked with other browser representatives to incorporate URL display guidance into the web URL standard (https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering-simplification https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering-simplification). The URL spec documents that browsers may simplify the URL by omitting irrelevant subdomains and schemes in security-sensitive surfaces like the omnibox. Google is trying to make this obfuscation a standard.
- danShumway 7y ago
  I don't think it's deliberate undermining, I think it's more, "people complained that we were breaking standards, so we fixed it by changing the standard." The Chrome team is almost incapable of reversing course on their decisions. Even when they get massive pushback and enough negative press to effectively force them to reverse course, it's only ever temporary. "Widespread criticism over a decision? That just means people aren't ready yet, or they're too emotional to think clearly about our position. Give it a couple of months to a year, and they'll all have calmed down enough to realize we're right." "People are complaining about breaking standards? It's not that our decision was wrong, people are just upset we didn't check all the right boxes and fill out all the right forms before we made it. It's not real criticism, it's just people being legalistic about the standards process. Fine, we'll play that game." And then they wonder why people automatically assume the worst whenever Chrome devs propose something new.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    There is a positive feedback cycle leading to polarization, and it works both ways. The more people assume the worst, the more likely they are to criticize with only a cursory understanding what's going on, and the more that justified criticism gets lost in the noise, leading to further communication breakdown as more people stop listening. In the worst case, certain things become "common knowledge" that nobody bothers checking anymore. Breaking that cycle requires putting effort into understanding both sides and going beyond quick comments.
    - danShumway 7y ago
madiathomas 7y ago
For Google, there is no money to be made when people know how to enter URL in a browser's address bar. Money is on users searching for a company using a name each time they want to visit a company website. That way Google can bombard users with adverts. When they click on those adverts, Google get paid. Now companies will be forced to advertise using Google AdWords. So that they can appear on top of the search list. Otherwise Google will show ads of their competitors first.
- move-on-by 7y ago
  Also there is terrible URL usability with google AMP pages. Google has every reason to do away with URLs as a user tool. I might be going off in the deep-end now, but if there are no URLs, why ever leave google.com at all? AMP is basically an early opt-in of rebranding the internet as google.com. Of course its all being done in the name of security, speed, and data-saving. Truly altruistic motivations.
tempodox 7y ago
By all means, hide the truth from the users and flat-out lie to them. After all, what's it of their concern which site they are browsing? The main thing is they see the ads.
PieUser 7y ago
First HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 They rolled this out 10 months ago but rolled it back after community backlash.
alexghooper 7y ago
This is unbelievably dumb.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
Endy 7y ago
Good reason to de-Google my existence. When an evil thing is actively trying to destroy the Web in a way even Microsoft didn't, it's time for that evil to get destroyed.
julius 7y ago
About 15 years ago we, the techies, killed the IE6 super monopoly (they basically had 100% browser market share). We installed firefox on any device we could get our hands on. Guess it is that time again.
EamonnMR 7y ago
URLs are one of the few things the modern web has retained that has allowed it to be truly interoperable across different devices, platforms, and walled gardens. If we loose the URL, we loose the web. I don't like this at all.
ep103 7y ago
Can we all start moving back to firefox yet?
emilfihlman 7y ago
No. This is really god damn annoying and stupid. The protocol is not distracting and www is different from non www.
lunias 7y ago
Why must we continue to insist on dumbing down our presentation of technology. Instead we must insist that users rise to the occasion. We are all inextricably linked to technology and yet I wonder if the newest users even know what a file extension is; because we hide that by default for some reason now. How many people have been the victims of phishing because an alias is more prominently displayed than the actual domain which the email originated from? I'm ready for a return to function over form. Do not hide information from me. If I suspect that your product development is driven by the lowest common denominator then I will look for alternatives. http and https are distinct and as such cannot be hidden; you could replace them with icons (barf) or ports (unlikely). www.site.com is a subdomain and is again distinct from site.com with the 'www.' omitted. Just because they tend to resolve to the same server does not mean that they must. Let's just call PI 3 because those decimals are an eyesore.
apeace 7y ago
A lot of the comments here are about Google's motivations for doing this, and it seems the consensus is they want to hide URLs so that users don't notice as Google swallows more of the internet. A couple question for those with this point of view: 1) Do you think users notice when they are using AMP articles today, even though the URL has not been hidden yet? 2) Do you think it would actually matter if they did notice a Google-hosted URL? Would they boycott Google or change their behavior somehow? 3) Do you think Apple has the same motivations as Google? Safari has been hiding www, scheme, and path for a while now. Do you think they have any valid reason for having done this? 4) What do you say to Google's stated reasons for making this change (simplicity and security)?
- la_barba 7y ago
  I think the point is that Google wants fuzzy boundaries between things that were never fuzzy to begin with, until they started confusing people - whether they intended to or not. If you asked any person- How do go to your favorite website before the omnibox, they had a clear set of steps that worked. If you asked them, how do you search for recipes they had a clear set of steps for that too. Google's omnibox/(aka keyword logger) made that boundary fuzzy and made it confusing for people. Earlier, people very quickly learned to recognize what is and isn't a valid url, because an invalid URL simply didn't work - this was a very very useful skill/knowledge to have. And every-time you had a typo you noticed it immediately. But then Google insisted on merging the URL and search bar and started correcting their typos and mistakes and people started losing this knowledge/skill. So now.. a lot of non technical folks I know type the url in google's search box in weird ways .. like "wwwfacebook" or "facebook .com" or other typos. So now, nobody actually knows what a valid URL is. That makes them easy targets for phishing and scamming. I'm not blaming this entirely on Google, but they did play a part. Google doesn't seem to realize how they're fucking up things even if that is not their intent.
gsich 7y ago
What a stupid idea.

230 points by PieUser 7y ago

yeah, whatever, it's too late anyway.

This hurts younger generations. They will become more and more oblivious to how things work. They will be forced to "trust" someone that knows better instead of having the knowledge to decide themselves. For those that become engineers, it will take even longer to untrain all the handholding they've had to endure. If the web is apparently so damn complicated maybe we should rebuild it to be "simpler" instead of hiding it how it works. I'd prefer to leave it exactly how it is until there is a clear reason to revisit the design.

Zekio 7y ago

Gotta say I'm not a fan of browser hiding information from the user

DangitBobby 7y ago
That was my first instinct as well but, you know, at some point if you don't know what it means and you aren't going to bother to find out, extra information is just noise. Green locks and red slashes are probably enough.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  That's bullshit IMO, people learn all sorts of complicated stuff in video games through embedded tutorials. There's no reason a browser couldn't do the same thing.

cloud_thrasher 7y ago

On the chrome://flags page, these prefs are found under #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme / #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-trivial-subdomains / #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-path-query-and-ref / #omnibox-ui-one-click-unelide

la_barba 7y ago
That's the nerd pacifier. They will remove those flags eventually as they have always done.

masswerk 7y ago

Hm, hiding the protocol and the host part in the address – what next, hiding the domain? However, the path is hidden already, what's left then? Seriously speaking: If browsers are simplifying the URI scheme for the alleged benefit of users, how do we expect these users to know anything about addresses? Isn't this rather undermining security than enhancing it? Highlighting significant parts may be preferable to hiding those deemed insignificant. Moreover, regarding https, I personally prefer positive affirmation over lack of warning. For me, this worked best for desktop browsers with the padlock icon (and, before this, the key icon) shown together with a display of link targets in a status bar as a separate, reserved area. (While allowing pages to overwrite `window.status` was certainly not a good idea.) A consistent display of the authority issuing the certificate of the current page in a status bar like this may be also nice. I'm not convinced that less but more opaque information is the way to go. Dedicating 20 vertical pixels of virtual real estate to security relevant information may be worth it. It may be also easier to parse than an overloaded omnnibox/location/search/navigation/security/menu bar. Cutting down any information which is displayed too densely right from the beginning won't help the issue. How many bits of information are there in this "everything bar"? Yes, there's still a bit of grouping left, mainly by spacing, but color is mostly gone as a signal in order to make the information density bearable. So users will be applying quite an amount of selectivity when parsing this display, by this inevitably missing relevant information. (That this densely combined display is rather homogenous both for esthetics and acceptance just aggravates the need for selective parsing, which is likely to become a habit.) "We'll pre-filter this for you" isn't addressing the problem, it's rather "living with the outcome". Edit: A legitimate reason for redacting the host name are extensive names, crafted to exceed the space available in the location display in order to deceive users regarding the identity of the host. Here, abbreviating by an ellipsis (compare text-overflow: ellipsis) in order to fully display the domain may be a way to go. -- P.S.: What's the general lesson taught by such redactions by the browser vendor? That it is OK to ignore these things, as they are truly irrelevant? (Must be without significance, since Google told me so?)

UncleMeat 7y ago
> Seriously speaking: If browsers are simplifying the URI scheme for the alleged benefit of users, how do we expect these users to know anything about addresses? Isn't this rather undermining security than enhancing it? Users already don't know anything about addresses. Even security professionals botch the "look at some visual indicator of connection security" all the time (see SSLStrip). As a security feature the URL bar is almost entirely useless for the huge majority of users. URL bars also don't really tell you where your content is coming from. Iframes don't have URL bars. All that javascript downloaded from somewhere when the page loaded doesn't have a URL bar. The web isn't made of uniquely identifiable documents anymore.

jazzyjackson 7y ago

The omnibox never seemed like a crowded part of the interface, did they do any kind of user testing where they found people were confused or annoyed by this 'https://www' https://www' prefix? Or is this just one team's sense of aesthetic ?

bencollier49 7y ago
People who don't understand URLs will use search to find sites. Obviously I've no clue why Google would be motivated to encourage that behaviour. Must be their sense of aesthetic.
- comex 7y ago
  So your claim is that simplifying URLs, which on its face seems like an attempt to make them easier to understand, is secretly intended to make them hard to understand? Forgive me for being skeptical.
  - Santosh83 7y ago
    Hiding behind more clicks is not always simplifying. URLs are central to the Web as we know it. Hiding important portions of it will only foster ignorance of the structure of Web in current and future users. What you don't know, you cannot use/employ. It becomes "hard to understand."
  - ezrast 7y ago
    I don't doubt that Googlers believe this is a useful change, but that belief is borne out of their own vested interest in deprecating traditional web navigation. That's really the best light you can put it in, considering how utterly user-hostile this decision is.
    - comex 7y ago
      The best light you can put it in is that removing unnecessary parts of the URL makes it easier for less advanced users to understand what the URL consists of, helping them use "traditional web navigation". To be fair, Google has previously experimented with hiding the entire path part of the URL, which does hinder URL-based navigation by making the displayed text unusable as a URL. However, that's different from this change, where typing the displayed text into a browser's URL bar would normally get you to the same page (unless the site is configured strangely).

skybrian 7y ago

On Chrome for Android, the URL is not editable unless you press an edit button, which displays a text box. I imagine this is another step in that direction, and if you click "edit", the text box still shows the whole thing. Compare with how email headers work in gmail. You don't see email addresses anymore by default, but there's a dropdown that shows them.

jdnenej 7y ago
Chipping away at open standards one piece at a time.
dpau 7y ago
or email to/from/cc in ios mail, where only the person's name is shown. clicking on the name displays a contact card. for people with multiple addresses, there's no way to tell which address is being used.
- rusk 7y ago
  Yeah this is incredibly stupid. If you have a contact with more than one number trying to call you, the only way to know which number they called u from is the little accent to indicate recently used in their contact card. God knows what happens if they tried to call you from more than one number ...
rudiv 7y ago
Are you sure this is the case for everyone? On my two android devices, tapping on the address bar still opens the keyboard for direct editing of the URL. I've never seen the behavior you're describing on Chrome for Android, although I concede it may be geofenced or something of the like.
- kuschku 7y ago
  This is what it shows for me on latest Chrome when clicking the address bar while on Wikipedia: https://i.k8r.eu/WIPPrQ.png https://i.k8r.eu/WIPPrQ.png You have to press edit for it to put the address back into the input field

skybrian 7y ago

It seems this change hasn't rolled out on Chrome 76 on a Mac. I don't see any change. (I don't have it on Android yet.)

duskwuff 7y ago

Didn't we already go through this last year? https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-69-kills-off-www-in-urls-heres-why-googles-move-has-made-people-angry/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/chrome-69-kills-off-www-in-url...

PieUser 7y ago
They delayed the rollout after people spoke out against it: "In Chrome M69, we rolled out a change to hide special-case subdomains “www” and “m” in the Chrome omnibox. After receiving community feedback about these changes, we have decided to roll back these changes in M69 on Chrome for Desktop and Android." I don't think there's any going back this time around...

bencollier49 7y ago

It increasingly grates on me that Google seem to want to ruin the internet using their browser monopoly in service of their ad revenue.

clouddrover 7y ago
Don't let it grate on you, just use Firefox. The only way you're going to influence their development direction from the outside is to choose a non-Chrome based alternative.
- isostatic 7y ago
  In the 90s people used to bemoan Microsoft using their OS monopoly and force IE6 on everyone Many tech people don't seem to care about Google and the Chrome monopoly Maybe it was the same in the 90s, but the only tech people I knew were on usenet and slashdot, and thus it only seemed everyone was against Microsoft's behaviour. Either way, we know how bad that behaviour was
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    I think the reason they don't care is because if they don't have to work with it (their destandardization of HTML I believe) they can trivially find countless alternatives themselves. They aren't restricted.
- asdernr 7y ago
  Please change my mind. Besides the 1% privacy gain and some more free RAM when using firefox over chrome. Which are the key/killer arguments for firefox, NOW? That chrome can become shit in the future is not to be discussed...
  - jddj 7y ago
    While it's better now in many ways, some of which you've already dismissed, the future matters now because our choices now effect our options tomorrow. In a way, with your browser choice you're effectively voting for the internet you want in the future. If that's Chrome and, despite the practical benefits of using Firefox, you trust Google above Mozilla to work in your best interests, then use Chrome.

Santosh83 7y ago

Industry wants you to open apps and click buttons and links, and not worry about such things as bothering with what the URL may be, or gasp, even typing in or editing your own URL. That's too complicated and dangerous for 'normal' users apparently according to them.

supernes 7y ago
Wondering how far they can take this. How long before we read that "Google will replace URLs with the Google search terms you can use to find the page you're viewing"
- keanebean86 7y ago
  Didn't aol try this 20ish years ago?
  - teddyh 7y ago
    And CompuServe before them.
    - jbverschoor 7y ago
      Isn’t this how things usually work? * New stuff comes out -> niche * Some smart people want to simplify it, but theres too “magic”, and fades away * General public learns about the underlying tech or at least structure * Big adoption happens as people trust it * Some people want to make it “magic”/simple again, but therefore creating a black box Forward a few years, and the industry seems inaccessible for a long time * people figure out again how things work Medical, construction, tech, space, movies.. almost everything has this pattern
- Sharlin 7y ago
  People mostly already do this organically, without any encouragement. The vast majority of users don't want to know about "URIs" or other technical details.
- 7y ago

reilly3000 7y ago

Safari has been hiding protocol and path for years. I don't care for it, but I also don't think its a conspiracy to destroy the web as we know it.

rusk 7y ago
You can disable this behaviour, and its all right there when you go to click on it. Presume you mean on mac btw, cos I using safari on ios and I can see the full address right in front of me. No protocol spec but a lock icon at least
- comex 7y ago
  The way Safari does it is a lot nicer UX. In Chrome, the URL scheme is always hidden, but if you press copy it magically copies the full URL to the clipboard – as opposed to the actual displayed text. In Safari, the URL scheme becomes visible once you click on the URL bar, so what you see is what you get. That said, I dislike the default behavior of hiding the entire path until you click, as opposed to just the URL scheme.

dazhbog 7y ago

Its all fine until you have to explain to your loved ones how to read domains and the difference between an email link with random-server-name.paypal.com vs. www.paypal.random-name.com If we remove meta data like this from everyday browsing maybe it will be harder for people to even grasp the idea of how domain names work?

keymone 7y ago
domain name is not metadata and the problem you're describing is more with mail clients and html emails than anybody else.
onion2k 7y ago
Telling people to look for https:// https:// as a way to indicate that they're secure isn't good enough. There's nothing stopping a malicious party applying an SSL certificate to www.paypal.random-name.com. Browsers need to inform users based on actual information that they have (eg the SSL cert, reports of malicious domains, etc) and display that to the user. Essentially Google know more about the state of a website than a user can learn from the domain alone, and they should display that to the user. Once that's happening the various parts of the domain are less important. The downside of this is that it increases Chrome users reliance on Google.
- cm2187 7y ago
  So basically a brave new word where google will decide what is a good and a bad website. Great.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    My preferred solution would be an open API standard that companies could use to provide independent information about domains, that browsers could use to pull data about domains, and that companies who index the web could use to update whether or not they trust domains. That way anyone could set up as a source of information about whether or not a domain is trustworthy. I'm not in a position to actually do it though, and Google are (for themselves, without sharing the API), so for now that's the best we've got. Maybe someone who has the resources to compete with Google will step up.

eridius 7y ago

I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here. I don't see how this change is detrimental to the web or somehow good for Google. Hiding the "https://" https://" seems like a perfectly fine idea as long as there's a clear way to distinguish between https and http pages. Safari's done this for a long time; https pages display a tiny padlock icon and http pages display a much more prominent "Not Secure — " prefix (i.e. the obvious display is when you're insecure, which is the right way to go about things). Hiding "www" seems less meaningful. I'm not really sure what the motivation is there, beyond the fact that the "www" prefix is mostly just aesthetics. My best guess is they want the url to start with "google.com" instead of "www.google.com", except that's not helpful from a security standpoint at all and might be slightly detrimental, if it trains people that the very first word they encounter is the most important, as paypal.whatever.com is not in fact paypal. But a lot of domains already elide the "www" anyway. Of course, in both cases I am assuming that putting focus on the URL bar will display the full URL.

on_and_off 7y ago
>I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here It is a change made by Google and it also dares try to simplify things for non tech savvy users so it has to be evil !
- penagwin 7y ago
  To me the problem is that it obscures the page URI, making it an unreliable source for exactly where you are. Whether this is a real concern for usual end users no I don't think so. It's mostly more annoying for the HN crowd who need to see it for development or are very security sensitive.
davman 7y ago
Its not always just aesthetic unfortunately. Try this shining example from British local government: http://www.manchester.gov.uk http://www.manchester.gov.uk vs http://manchester.gov.uk http://manchester.gov.uk
- 7y ago

stojano 7y ago

again??

lousken 7y ago

So instead of fixing their tab interface which is terrible if you have hundreds of tabs they rather choose to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place, gj chrome team

keymone 7y ago

both changes are great. www must go, it's a remnant of the past, the sooner the better. protocol is not a detail that should be ever exposed to the end user, at least not in text form. visual cues "you're safe" or "your connection isn't secure" are much more effective.

rusk 7y ago
This of course presumes that the dns is only for www, which of course it isnt
- keymone 7y ago
  could you elaborate please?
  - rusk 7y ago
    no, sorry
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> www must go, it's a remnant of the past, the sooner the better. Which then is a thing for websites to do, not for browsers to lie about.
- keymone 7y ago
  > not for browsers to lie about it's just like your opinion man. not showing redundant information is good. if you disagree where's your rant about browsers lying about port 80 by not showing it? if your point is that www.name.com can be different site from name.com - i disagree even more, this is a case of incompetent developers at name.com so redirect your rage accordingly :) > a thing for websites to do they'll do it eventually, doesn't mean browsers shouldn't be getting rid of redundancy.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    > it's just like your opinion man. not showing redundant information is good. The host name is not redundant information. > if you disagree where's your rant about browsers lying about port 80 by not showing it? Why should I write idiotic rants? > if your point is that www.name.com can be different site from name.com - i disagree even more, this is a case of incompetent developers at name.com so redirect your rage accordingly :) Well, great that you disagree. Now, please do the work of changing the relevant standards instead of making yourself look like an idiot by calling people who read and follow standards "incompetent developers". > they'll do it eventually, doesn't mean browsers shouldn't be getting rid of redundancy. Which is not the topic of this disucssion.

amanzi 7y ago

Just use Firefox! And then install Firefox on your friends' and family's computers too, and set it as the default for them. Spread the word...

HeavenBanned 7y ago
Firefox is almost entirely funded by Google IIRC.
- PudgePacket 7y ago
  Phrasing it like that is quite misleading.. Yes they receive money for having google.com as the default homepage if I remember correctly. The way you worded it makes it sound like Google controls them.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    It's misleading to claim Chrome/Google doesn't have an immense control over web standards and protocols.
    - jjulius 7y ago
      You do realize OP was simply referring to Google having direct control of Firefox financially, not via web standards, yeah? You're implying OP is saying something that they're not.
      - Avamander 7y ago
        The comment I replied to tried to imply Google has little control over Firefox ("The way you worded it makes it sound like Google controls them."), the immense control is true, it doesn't matter what OP said in this situation.
isostatic 7y ago
Firefox has a nasty history of following chrome's choices

BluSyn 7y ago

I'll play devils advocate. I'm fine with this being default assuming there's an option for advanced users to disable it. 95% of Chrome users will not notice or care about this change, and in fact will make things simpler for them in the long run. Also, seriously people, ditch www. subdomains already. It's not 2002 anymore. I cringe so hard when I see that crap in print ads and billboards.

arkitaip 7y ago
There are legit reasons why you should use a www. sub domain: https://bjornjohansen.no/www-or-not https://bjornjohansen.no/www-or-not
- Avamander 7y ago
  Quite a few of those "cookies can be read by third parties" things boil down to "we don't know how to use SameSite".
robocat 7y ago
> ditch www. subdomains already Sweet, unless you use any other subdomains for web pages, or want to in the future. Usually you don't want cookies for domain.com to affect api.donain.com, admin.domain.com, test.domain.com etc. I actually love www subdomains - the origin tells you it is a website.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Exactly why don't you want your site's cookies to affect your site? Do you think perhaps you're abusing what cookies are meant to do?
- pas 7y ago
  Separating api. and www. makes authentication messier (thus less secure). [At least I haven't seen a clear and good one yet.] And with HTTP/2 you don't have to worry about static stuff slowing down or crowding out API req-resp data.
- 7y ago

sam_goody 7y ago

And this way you won't know if your page is AMP, or just a webpage (since amp follows www in things they are hiding). I strongly suspect that this (and the eventual goal of making the whole web hosted by Google) is actually the rationale behind the decision. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 Also, training the user to treat the URL as text, so that you search for domains (type "amazon" instead of "amazon.com"), is better for them. The "URL" bar is for Chrome also a search bar (and every domain you enter is sent to Google "for search suggestions").

mtgx 7y ago
Yes, I also believe this is the primary reason Google is doing this. They want to hide urls with referrer tracking, AMP URLs, and other such things from the user.

Boulth 7y ago

Hiding "www" subdomain looks like an ugly workaround for missing support for DNS SRV records in HTTP/browsers.

tialaramex 7y ago
Good news on that front. To do a bunch of new things browser vendors want, they need to put more stuff into DNS. For example eSNI needs keys in DNS, and HTTP/3 (HTTP over QUIC, which is the new encrypted transport protocol) wants a way to discover HTTP/3 availability before connecting with TLS. So at IETF 105 last week there was stuff pinging around about the idea of a single new record, perhaps just for HTTP or perhaps more, that wraps all this stuff up, with all the SRV features too. The DPRIVE work is having the effect of reducing the pressure to not use DNS, because crappy DNS servers break all the time when you add new things, but DPRIVE servers are operated by people who actually know what they're doing so that isn't a risk, and eSNI in particular makes no sense without DPRIVE, so why not.

josteink 7y ago

So google wants to replace the URL in the URL bar with a URL which is semantically different. What could possibly go wrong? Seriously. What kind of incompetent, lazy people are working at Google these days? Because clearly nobody gave this any real thought.

nopacience 7y ago

Again google comes up with this. I think the google plan is: 1. hide the address bar from chrome 2. make users use google to search instead of using address bar directly 3. google will use AMP for every site of any type. Then google will serve as a proxy

buboard 7y ago

“Part of our scheme to introduce ads in the address bar”

peterbraden 7y ago

Chrome is getting more and more user hostile. At the moment you can't inspect a site's certificate without going into developer tools. Terrible decisions, the developers should be ashamed.

bitcurious 7y ago

Reads like folks at Chrome are just making work to have work because the senior leadership has no vision. Needs to be addressed before they burn through the goodwill they’ve built up.

duluca 7y ago

Sigh. Many new comers to web development learn by observing, this will take that away. Www and https handling requires explicit configuration. Unless the intent is to not let people type in www or http, but what happens when they do and it’s not handled correctly?

fortran77 7y ago

hiding www. seems like a bad idea.

pyentropy 7y ago

So apparently Google rolled out an update where they 'm.domain.com' turn into 'domain.com' in the omnibox. In what world is this acceptable? How can they assume that 'm.' always means mobile and 'www.' is the same as the root domain for all hosts? Let's assume that you have a blog platform offering subdomains for each user and 'm.blogplatform.com' is available. Now, any user can get that subdomain and impersonate the homepage because Emily from Chromium decided that eliding parts of the URL without any spec is a reasonable decision.

joshuamorton 7y ago
Yes, that's why that change was rolled back.
saalweachter 7y ago
I hate to break it to you, but if you allow www.companyname.website, companyname.website, and m.companyname.website to be owned by different entities, your users are already being phished.
- type0 7y ago
  simply not true, you are confusing different issues
- rnotaro 7y ago
  Tumblr have a url scheme where subdomains are user-owned. https://m.tumblr.com/ https://m.tumblr.com/ != https://tumblr.com https://tumblr.com When they initially decided to hide the "m" subdomain, https://m.tumblr.com/ https://m.tumblr.com/ was shwon as tumblr.com. It's not the only website with that issue.

cannedslime 7y ago

Remove protocol? Sure an arguement could be made that showing it is redundant giving the lock symbol appears when HTTPS is enabled. But removing sub domains like m. and www. isn't really cool. I already hate the fact that chrome on mobile totally removes the URL when you focus the navbar, sucks if you want to go to some other subreddit etc.

Mindwipe 7y ago

What a toxic, user-hostile idea. The Chromium team desperately need new leadership.

logiclogic 7y ago

Google doing more evil again. Fuck everyone working for this company. The devils minions is what you are.

dang 7y ago
Could you please not break the site guidelines when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Communitivity 7y ago

Hiding the scheme is a dangerous path, because users then have to depend on browser specific indicators of https, or other secure schemes. I think it's a bad idea for that reason, and for another higher level reason. As a developer and sys admin before that I've always tried to assume my users are smart people and try to educate them about what they might not know, instead of assuming they are dumb and attempting to PICNIC-proof software/systems. I think hiding the scheme indicates an assumption that users are dumb and need to be told what to do. I've seen reporting on other indicators of this from Google over the last decade (e.g., Google Reader's sunset, Google+, working with China's censors, and others). FYI, PICNIC = Problem In Chair Not In Computer

teddyh 7y ago
> PICNIC I believe the more common term is “PEBKAC”: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PEBKAC.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PEBKAC.html
Jwarder 7y ago
> users then have to depend on browser specific indicators of https, or other secure schemes That's extra painful because browsers keep on changing what those indicators are.

ubermonkey 7y ago

This seems like a bad idea.

driverdan 7y ago

The worst part: > We've worked with other browser representatives to incorporate URL display guidance into the web URL standard (https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering-simplification https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-rendering-simplification). The URL spec documents that browsers may simplify the URL by omitting irrelevant subdomains and schemes in security-sensitive surfaces like the omnibox. Google is trying to make this obfuscation a standard.

danShumway 7y ago
I don't think it's deliberate undermining, I think it's more, "people complained that we were breaking standards, so we fixed it by changing the standard." The Chrome team is almost incapable of reversing course on their decisions. Even when they get massive pushback and enough negative press to effectively force them to reverse course, it's only ever temporary. "Widespread criticism over a decision? That just means people aren't ready yet, or they're too emotional to think clearly about our position. Give it a couple of months to a year, and they'll all have calmed down enough to realize we're right." "People are complaining about breaking standards? It's not that our decision was wrong, people are just upset we didn't check all the right boxes and fill out all the right forms before we made it. It's not real criticism, it's just people being legalistic about the standards process. Fine, we'll play that game." And then they wonder why people automatically assume the worst whenever Chrome devs propose something new.
- skybrian 7y ago
  There is a positive feedback cycle leading to polarization, and it works both ways. The more people assume the worst, the more likely they are to criticize with only a cursory understanding what's going on, and the more that justified criticism gets lost in the noise, leading to further communication breakdown as more people stop listening. In the worst case, certain things become "common knowledge" that nobody bothers checking anymore. Breaking that cycle requires putting effort into understanding both sides and going beyond quick comments.
  - danShumway 7y ago

madiathomas 7y ago

For Google, there is no money to be made when people know how to enter URL in a browser's address bar. Money is on users searching for a company using a name each time they want to visit a company website. That way Google can bombard users with adverts. When they click on those adverts, Google get paid. Now companies will be forced to advertise using Google AdWords. So that they can appear on top of the search list. Otherwise Google will show ads of their competitors first.

move-on-by 7y ago
Also there is terrible URL usability with google AMP pages. Google has every reason to do away with URLs as a user tool. I might be going off in the deep-end now, but if there are no URLs, why ever leave google.com at all? AMP is basically an early opt-in of rebranding the internet as google.com. Of course its all being done in the name of security, speed, and data-saving. Truly altruistic motivations.

tempodox 7y ago

By all means, hide the truth from the users and flat-out lie to them. After all, what's it of their concern which site they are browsing? The main thing is they see the ads.

PieUser 7y ago

First HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927972 They rolled this out 10 months ago but rolled it back after community backlash.

alexghooper 7y ago

This is unbelievably dumb.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dang 7y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Endy 7y ago

Good reason to de-Google my existence. When an evil thing is actively trying to destroy the Web in a way even Microsoft didn't, it's time for that evil to get destroyed.

julius 7y ago

About 15 years ago we, the techies, killed the IE6 super monopoly (they basically had 100% browser market share). We installed firefox on any device we could get our hands on. Guess it is that time again.

EamonnMR 7y ago

URLs are one of the few things the modern web has retained that has allowed it to be truly interoperable across different devices, platforms, and walled gardens. If we loose the URL, we loose the web. I don't like this at all.

ep103 7y ago

Can we all start moving back to firefox yet?

emilfihlman 7y ago

No. This is really god damn annoying and stupid. The protocol is not distracting and www is different from non www.

lunias 7y ago

Why must we continue to insist on dumbing down our presentation of technology. Instead we must insist that users rise to the occasion. We are all inextricably linked to technology and yet I wonder if the newest users even know what a file extension is; because we hide that by default for some reason now. How many people have been the victims of phishing because an alias is more prominently displayed than the actual domain which the email originated from? I'm ready for a return to function over form. Do not hide information from me. If I suspect that your product development is driven by the lowest common denominator then I will look for alternatives. http and https are distinct and as such cannot be hidden; you could replace them with icons (barf) or ports (unlikely). www.site.com is a subdomain and is again distinct from site.com with the 'www.' omitted. Just because they tend to resolve to the same server does not mean that they must. Let's just call PI 3 because those decimals are an eyesore.

apeace 7y ago

A lot of the comments here are about Google's motivations for doing this, and it seems the consensus is they want to hide URLs so that users don't notice as Google swallows more of the internet. A couple question for those with this point of view: 1) Do you think users notice when they are using AMP articles today, even though the URL has not been hidden yet? 2) Do you think it would actually matter if they did notice a Google-hosted URL? Would they boycott Google or change their behavior somehow? 3) Do you think Apple has the same motivations as Google? Safari has been hiding www, scheme, and path for a while now. Do you think they have any valid reason for having done this? 4) What do you say to Google's stated reasons for making this change (simplicity and security)?

la_barba 7y ago
I think the point is that Google wants fuzzy boundaries between things that were never fuzzy to begin with, until they started confusing people - whether they intended to or not. If you asked any person- How do go to your favorite website before the omnibox, they had a clear set of steps that worked. If you asked them, how do you search for recipes they had a clear set of steps for that too. Google's omnibox/(aka keyword logger) made that boundary fuzzy and made it confusing for people. Earlier, people very quickly learned to recognize what is and isn't a valid url, because an invalid URL simply didn't work - this was a very very useful skill/knowledge to have. And every-time you had a typo you noticed it immediately. But then Google insisted on merging the URL and search bar and started correcting their typos and mistakes and people started losing this knowledge/skill. So now.. a lot of non technical folks I know type the url in google's search box in weird ways .. like "wwwfacebook" or "facebook .com" or other typos. So now, nobody actually knows what a valid URL is. That makes them easy targets for phishing and scamming. I'm not blaming this entirely on Google, but they did play a part. Google doesn't seem to realize how they're fucking up things even if that is not their intent.

gsich 7y ago

What a stupid idea.