URLs are one of the basic building blocks of the WWW. Again Google is abusing it's practical monopoly as the gateway to the WWW to consolidate the lock-in. Agai

URLs are one of the basic building blocks of the WWW. Again Google is abusing it's practical monopoly as the gateway to the WWW to consolidate the lock-in. Again, as always, the tech aware crowd will make a huge noise, perhaps delay the inevitable, but sooner or later this WILL be implemented all across Google (right now seems specific to Google UK), and again, as always, the billions of ordinary Internet users are going to be slightly surprised, but shrug and get used to the change and move on. And that will help consolidate the change and the tech aware crowd will either grudgingly follow or just stay holed up elsewhere and in either case Google doesn't care. This is just another manifestation of the corporate/state control and Balkanisation of the Internet that has slowly been taking place. The Internet will pretty soon be entirely subsumed into various the structure of various countries and corporations and there'll be no such thing as the "free web", at least for most users not willing to go through several hoops.