I think that's a great example of the benefits though. HN could continue to use their fairly opaque URLs in the background, but instead show something like new

I think that's a great example of the benefits though. HN could continue to use their fairly opaque URLs in the background, but instead show something like news.ycombinator.com > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Google hides full addresses in URL bar on Chrome 85 This makes it easy to not only see where you are, but also quickly click on a part of the address to go to that hierarchy, or a sibling like yesterdays posts. It makes sense that a forum like this would have a way too see all posts from a day, month, or year. Of course, most if not all users here are comfortable with URLs so they're probably not the ones that would benefit the most. But I think most common users, the ones who Google everything instead of typing in an address, would use the breadcrumb bar while today they probably see the URL as some weird text string they have little interest in or understanding of.