The excuse that this is to prevent phishing would make more sense if not for the fact that Firefox already has a much better solution to this in displaying only

The excuse that this is to prevent phishing would make more sense if not for the fact that Firefox already has a much better solution to this in displaying only the domain in full black/white and the rest of the URL as a less visible light grey. Chrome did something like this before too, but less pronounced. It being very pronounced in Firefox seems to work based on my experiences.