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There has also been a push by Google and others lately to "dumb down" the url bar to hide the full address from users. Not sure why but I assume the justificati

There has also been a push by Google and others lately to "dumb down" the url bar to hide the full address from users. Not sure why but I assume the justification would be some misguided attempt at making it look nicer while the real reason is somehow ad related.

JadeNB 5y ago
> There has also been a push by Google and others lately to "dumb down" the url bar to hide the full address from users. Not sure why but I assume the justification would be some misguided attempt at making it look nicer while the real reason is somehow ad related. Suggesting Google might do anything without ad-related motives is probably too generous, but I've always thought that this was an optimisation in the sense that it's built on optimism: when everything's working well, most of what's in the URL bar is irrelevant. So the bar is built towards working well in the best case, at the expense of becoming much less useful in the worse (and probably more common) case.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  I think the reason was mostly AMP. Hiding/obscuring details from the URL bar seems like much less of a big deal if the goal is to rehost someone else's content. The value statement of the URL goes down a lot in that case, and the push to drive users away from it starts to make sense. Either which way, I still hate it - The only non-work related ticket I've put in for chromium was a request for an option to disable this behavior entirely. It's bad form from folks who should know better.
  - throaway3141593 5y ago
    > I think the reason was mostly AMP. Safari on both mobile and desktop started doing this years before AMP was a thing.
- throaway3141593 5y ago
  Safari has been doing this for years. The justification is partly because it makes the domain more obvious, especially on a mobile device where you have limited screen width. https://www.netflix.com.evilcorp.com https://www.netflix.com.evilcorp.com would simply show up as evilcorp.com if only the domain is shown.
jrochkind1 5y ago
One of the justifications is that showing only the hostname will make it easier to recognize malicious hostnames; as it is, the typical non-technical user just sees a bunch of stuff, doesn't really know how to distinguish hostname from path. I buy it honestly.
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  how they suppose to learn about it or at least be curious about it if they do not even see it? >I buy it honestly. phishing should look nice to the victim?
  - snowl 5y ago
    In the case of OP, what the user would see in the bar would be 'delivery-85367.icu' which looks very suspicious.
    - lovelyviking 5y ago
      They would see nothing becaue they do not look there anymore at all. Average person would think:"it's some bug with showing the name of the site" and would ignore it because users get used to the 'barely working everything' with computers these days.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    The idea is not to make phishing look nice to the victim, it's to make it more obvious that it's phishing to the attempted victim. The path component is irrelevant to detecting phishing, but the host component is very relevant. I don't know if there's any research on users to confirm that this works. It would be good to do such research before making such a change, if that's the motivation for the change. But it seems plausible to me.
    - lovelyviking 5y ago
      >... The path component is irrelevant to detecting phishing ... What become irrelevant is the AddressBar itself for the user. User simply doesn't look at it at all because usually it is not changing with each click. So it appears irrelevant and disconnected from the actions user takes. It looks for non-technical person as "some name of the web site which doesn't always shows the right name, but it's ok because hey nothing works perfectly on computer anyway ... so it doesn't matter". This is how it looks to the average person. They do not even understand why it's there. "Just takes the space ... Why it's there? Site shows name anyway on the page ... " They just have no idea what is going on thanks to this wonderful idea of removing the real address bar ... Not that they were too much aware before but at least you could explain them ... not anymore. According to my experience non-technical people just lost the concept of url completely and do not even know where it is. Even when one asks them about it specifically. These are the 'real' results of this idiotic idea which I observe in practice and I unfortunately I observe it too frequently to ignore it. But hey .. downvoters of my previous sarcastic post seems to be very happy to ignore the reality. They would rather stick to their wise decision and downvote reality if they do not like it. Good luck with that.
mehlmao 5y ago
My interpretation is that they don't want users to go to a specific URL, Google wants users to search for it (and click an ad) on Google.
_jal 5y ago
It isn't just Google. Multiple browsers have flirted with hiding it. There are various mindsets that lead to want to do that - one designer I know calls it a debugging tool that should never have been released in the first place. For others, it is clearly about controlling the user with various justifications. (I consider it a canary. Its removal will be a signal that the HugeCos are comfortable relegating the non-corporate web to the fringe, Usenet-style. It will be there, and you can get to it if you go way out of your way, but what it there will mostly be automated spam and weirdness, tons of examples of specific use cases, and a few folks who have been arguing with each other since 1992.)
- flyinghamster 5y ago
  This and the proliferation of gold-rush TLDs like the .icu mentioned in the article make me feel like we're pretty well all the way there. For all my fighting the good fight, I'm just one more voice in the wilderness, though, and everyone wants their magic boxes without caring what's going on inside them - until they get bitten.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > one designer I know calls it a debugging tool that should never have been released in the first place I've heard similar comments but I don't understand how people would be expected to navigate around the internet? Is the idea that Google's search input should replace it? So if I want to go to sec.gov I should search SEC and click the link (hopefully) provided at the top of the results rather than just go there directly? It just doesn't make sense to me.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    In my limited experience, most browsers do what you describe already. Unless you type a 100% correct URL (and sometimes even if you do), a normal browser will send your URL string to Google (or similar entity), who will send back a redirect. The process is fast enought for you not to notice. It is often possible (if hard) to configure browsers to do traditional URL resolving, but I wouldn’t bet on it always being possible. Google certainly has every reason to disallow reconfiguring their own browser to not send data to Google.

JadeNB 5y ago

> There has also been a push by Google and others lately to "dumb down" the url bar to hide the full address from users. Not sure why but I assume the justification would be some misguided attempt at making it look nicer while the real reason is somehow ad related. Suggesting Google might do anything without ad-related motives is probably too generous, but I've always thought that this was an optimisation in the sense that it's built on optimism: when everything's working well, most of what's in the URL bar is irrelevant. So the bar is built towards working well in the best case, at the expense of becoming much less useful in the worse (and probably more common) case.

horsawlarway 5y ago
I think the reason was mostly AMP. Hiding/obscuring details from the URL bar seems like much less of a big deal if the goal is to rehost someone else's content. The value statement of the URL goes down a lot in that case, and the push to drive users away from it starts to make sense. Either which way, I still hate it - The only non-work related ticket I've put in for chromium was a request for an option to disable this behavior entirely. It's bad form from folks who should know better.
- throaway3141593 5y ago
  > I think the reason was mostly AMP. Safari on both mobile and desktop started doing this years before AMP was a thing.
throaway3141593 5y ago
Safari has been doing this for years. The justification is partly because it makes the domain more obvious, especially on a mobile device where you have limited screen width. https://www.netflix.com.evilcorp.com https://www.netflix.com.evilcorp.com would simply show up as evilcorp.com if only the domain is shown.

jrochkind1 5y ago

One of the justifications is that showing only the hostname will make it easier to recognize malicious hostnames; as it is, the typical non-technical user just sees a bunch of stuff, doesn't really know how to distinguish hostname from path. I buy it honestly.

lovelyviking 5y ago
how they suppose to learn about it or at least be curious about it if they do not even see it? >I buy it honestly. phishing should look nice to the victim?
- snowl 5y ago
  In the case of OP, what the user would see in the bar would be 'delivery-85367.icu' which looks very suspicious.
  - lovelyviking 5y ago
    They would see nothing becaue they do not look there anymore at all. Average person would think:"it's some bug with showing the name of the site" and would ignore it because users get used to the 'barely working everything' with computers these days.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  The idea is not to make phishing look nice to the victim, it's to make it more obvious that it's phishing to the attempted victim. The path component is irrelevant to detecting phishing, but the host component is very relevant. I don't know if there's any research on users to confirm that this works. It would be good to do such research before making such a change, if that's the motivation for the change. But it seems plausible to me.
  - lovelyviking 5y ago
    >... The path component is irrelevant to detecting phishing ... What become irrelevant is the AddressBar itself for the user. User simply doesn't look at it at all because usually it is not changing with each click. So it appears irrelevant and disconnected from the actions user takes. It looks for non-technical person as "some name of the web site which doesn't always shows the right name, but it's ok because hey nothing works perfectly on computer anyway ... so it doesn't matter". This is how it looks to the average person. They do not even understand why it's there. "Just takes the space ... Why it's there? Site shows name anyway on the page ... " They just have no idea what is going on thanks to this wonderful idea of removing the real address bar ... Not that they were too much aware before but at least you could explain them ... not anymore. According to my experience non-technical people just lost the concept of url completely and do not even know where it is. Even when one asks them about it specifically. These are the 'real' results of this idiotic idea which I observe in practice and I unfortunately I observe it too frequently to ignore it. But hey .. downvoters of my previous sarcastic post seems to be very happy to ignore the reality. They would rather stick to their wise decision and downvote reality if they do not like it. Good luck with that.

mehlmao 5y ago

My interpretation is that they don't want users to go to a specific URL, Google wants users to search for it (and click an ad) on Google.

_jal 5y ago

It isn't just Google. Multiple browsers have flirted with hiding it. There are various mindsets that lead to want to do that - one designer I know calls it a debugging tool that should never have been released in the first place. For others, it is clearly about controlling the user with various justifications. (I consider it a canary. Its removal will be a signal that the HugeCos are comfortable relegating the non-corporate web to the fringe, Usenet-style. It will be there, and you can get to it if you go way out of your way, but what it there will mostly be automated spam and weirdness, tons of examples of specific use cases, and a few folks who have been arguing with each other since 1992.)

flyinghamster 5y ago
This and the proliferation of gold-rush TLDs like the .icu mentioned in the article make me feel like we're pretty well all the way there. For all my fighting the good fight, I'm just one more voice in the wilderness, though, and everyone wants their magic boxes without caring what's going on inside them - until they get bitten.
elliekelly 5y ago
> one designer I know calls it a debugging tool that should never have been released in the first place I've heard similar comments but I don't understand how people would be expected to navigate around the internet? Is the idea that Google's search input should replace it? So if I want to go to sec.gov I should search SEC and click the link (hopefully) provided at the top of the results rather than just go there directly? It just doesn't make sense to me.
- teddyh 5y ago
  In my limited experience, most browsers do what you describe already. Unless you type a 100% correct URL (and sometimes even if you do), a normal browser will send your URL string to Google (or similar entity), who will send back a redirect. The process is fast enought for you not to notice. It is often possible (if hard) to configure browsers to do traditional URL resolving, but I wouldn’t bet on it always being possible. Google certainly has every reason to disallow reconfiguring their own browser to not send data to Google.