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Google is actively trying to kill the URL[1]. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it is a goal of theirs to fundamentally change or eliminate the URL ent

Google is actively trying to kill the URL[1]. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, but it is a goal of theirs to fundamentally change or eliminate the URL entry bar, yes. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-chrome-ends-its-war-on-address-bar-urls-for-now-at-least/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-chrome-ends-i...

dylan604 5y ago
>I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, It's bad, very very bad
- efitz 5y ago
  If it’s Google doing something to try to change the internet, it approaches certainty that it’s bad, whatever “it” is.
  - lowlevel 5y ago
    I believe the word you're looking for is 'evil'.
- coldpie 5y ago
  I tend to agree, but at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling. It may be we're just wrong and there really is a better way to do it, I've certainly been wrong about plenty of other things. Dunno. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722
  - dylan604 5y ago
    My counter to that is that if you think you are submitting a URL to go to a website but instead that data is sent to 3rd party which allows them to continue their tracking of everything you do, then this is bad. Be upfront and clear with your users. If you are sending data to a 3rd party in a way that is not 100% obvious, then it's bad UI leaning towards dark patterns. If you are a UI dev and it never occurred to you a user would do something like this, then that's typical. If after you learn that users are doing something you as the dev finds not normal, then maybe the UI needs to be tweaked. If you design the UI to confuse/trick people, then you are just an asshole.
    - coldpie 5y ago
      I think you will find you are in a tiny minority. Most people don't care about that, and you have a long uphill battle to convince them they should, especially if they find this new experience more useful. Legislation may be a way to solve that problem, but we've long left discussing the URL bar at that point. Edit: Also I genuinely don't think collecting end-user data is the primary goal of the Chrome team with this change, although I agree it's a likely side-effect. I think they are trying to create a better end-user experience, even if you and I don't feel that it is better for us (nerds) in particular :)
      - dylan604 5y ago
        So how is typing into the text field a full URL like 'example.com' and getting a search result better for the user than going to the damn url that was entered? If I was actually wanting to search for information about the URL provided, then the result is expected. However, if I just want to go to the damn url, it is not useful at all. Now, in this unified input that you seem complacent with, how do I avoid the step of search results when I just want to view a specific website?
        coldpie 5y ago
        I've said several times I agree with your discomfort with the idea, so please chill out a bit :) Also, I didn't say google wants to kill the URL bar. I said google wants to kill the URL. So you wouldn't type in "example.com", you would do something else to get to whatever content you wanted from what used to be called "example.com". I don't know what the replacement for URLs will be, and it seems neither does Google (yet), but I'm at least open to the idea that there may be a better idea. Some further reading: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-rid-of-urls-but-doesnt-know-what-to-use-instead/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-... https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling I don't. As I replied to that post directly, the URL bar is not like the choke lever on a car, but more like the steering wheel or navigation input. It's the UI element that is used to communicate user's goals to the machine - not some incidental control of a subsystem that gets automated away.
    - coldpie 5y ago
      Google is suggesting replacing the URL entirely. URLs have real problems, which are genuinely really hard to solve. They're also designed for a subset of web content, and a lot of modern web content does not fit into the URL scheme very well. I don't know if Google's replacement will be better, but I am at least willing to hear them out once they have a proposal.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        I'd be happy to hear them out too. Much less happy with them just slowly, piece by piece, making their vision happen without "public consultation", just by the virtue of being the dominant browser vendor.
        coldpie 5y ago
        I don't think they're trying to "make their vision happen," I think they're trying to solve real issues people have with URLs. Some of their solutions don't work, as stated in the article I linked original, but I don't think they're doing anything nefarious. They're trying to serve their users, the vast majority of whom have no idea what a URL is.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > I don't think they're trying to "make their vision happen," I think they're trying to solve real issues people have with URLs. I think you're sadly misguided and, frankly, scaringly naïve.
Tostino 5y ago
Well I just learned how to stop Chrome from hiding the https:// https:// at the start of URLs from that link, so thank you. I really hate what Google is doing in this area with their immense power over the web. It may be more friendly for those who just don't care how computers work and just want their Facebook button, but it's very hostile for those who do know how they work.
nathancahill 5y ago
iOS and now Safari only display the domain, so not great either.
denton-scratch 5y ago
URLs are awful; I think they are a bodge. I think the same about domain names, and the whole DNS system. I mean, I think the DNS was a brilliant invention; it saved you having to memorise the IP address of every site you visited. But talking someone through entering a URL over the phone is a bit like fixing printer problems remotely; it feels like the early '80s. But I'd prefer real URL bars, rather than a field that doesn't know whether you're entering a URL or search-terms.
- dylan604 5y ago
  If you're talking about telling someone over the phone how to enter example.com/specificpage.ext?key1=val1&key2=val2&key3=ABCDEFG0123456789, I'd agree that is painful and hopefully not necessary. Telling someone to enter example.com into the URL bar, click on the specificpage link, then select the correct information for the printer you have is much easier
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    That is what I was talking about; pretty good example, except the missing protocol and "://". I'm remembering the difficulty of explaining what is a forward slash and what is a backward slash. After all, they both lean forward - one leads with its feet, the other with its head. It doesn't help if your contact is using a different keyboard from you. You have to keep asking them to read it back to you. I still have to do this occasionally; it feels like swimming through treakle. Edit: Oh, and then there's people who don't know what "colon" means. And "hash" and "pound" have different meanings depending where you are. At least in this country, punctuation is less and less emphasised. I had to teach my kids to punctutate myself, and I suspect I'm the only person they use punctuation for.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > After all, they both lean forward - one leads with its feet, the other with its head. Leading with one's feet is commonly known as leaning backward.
    - 5y ago
dylan604 5y ago
Search and keywords are part of Google's DNA. Of course they want to utilize the thing that they do anywhere they can. Eliminating the URL means that everything is a keyword search to visit places. We've already seen how that doesn't work well with AOL. Maybe you're not old enough to remember it, so it sounds like a promising idea. The thing G has over AOL is that G has a complete profile on you that AOL never had. So yes, this sounds like a good idea to Google. Not allowing a user to go directly to where they want to go is just bad. It's like ordering a Lyft to take you somewhere, but the driver takes you to 4 different places that pays Lyft money to artificially increase traffic to their place before ultimately taking you to where you wanted to go. It's just a waste of everyone's time.
- coldpie 5y ago
  > Eliminating the URL means that everything is a keyword search to visit places. I don't think you can jump to that conclusion. For example I can come up with an idea that removes URLs without going through google. Imagine a new protocol where the user types in something like "john's pizza cafe; order a pizza". My local pizza joint is registered in a DNS-like system and handles the query directly with some commodity search-like system, never going through google; or the pizza joint offloads the query to some 3rd party which crawls their site and handles the resolution. (This is just some dumb idea I came up with off the top of my head; please don't nit-pick it to pieces. Wait for Google's proposal to come out and nit-pick that.) Every internet query going through google would be bad, sure. But google isn't proposing that... yet :)
  - dylan604 5y ago
    > please don't nit-pick it to pieces. that's not how this works. if you don't wont opinions, don't post an idea to the internet. you've just replaced a working DNS system with a DNS system based on best guess or worse requiring a small biz to register with multiple DNS like systems. What happens when competitor beats you to those multiple registration points? >But google isn't proposing that... yet :) Why in the world would you think that google would do anything that did not use their system? That's just not based in reality one bit.
kccqzy 5y ago
Safari has done that many years ago. I don't recall it being a point of discussion, let alone a full article.

dylan604 5y ago

>I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, It's bad, very very bad

efitz 5y ago
If it’s Google doing something to try to change the internet, it approaches certainty that it’s bad, whatever “it” is.
- lowlevel 5y ago
  I believe the word you're looking for is 'evil'.
coldpie 5y ago
I tend to agree, but at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling. It may be we're just wrong and there really is a better way to do it, I've certainly been wrong about plenty of other things. Dunno. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864722
- dylan604 5y ago
  My counter to that is that if you think you are submitting a URL to go to a website but instead that data is sent to 3rd party which allows them to continue their tracking of everything you do, then this is bad. Be upfront and clear with your users. If you are sending data to a 3rd party in a way that is not 100% obvious, then it's bad UI leaning towards dark patterns. If you are a UI dev and it never occurred to you a user would do something like this, then that's typical. If after you learn that users are doing something you as the dev finds not normal, then maybe the UI needs to be tweaked. If you design the UI to confuse/trick people, then you are just an asshole.
  - coldpie 5y ago
    I think you will find you are in a tiny minority. Most people don't care about that, and you have a long uphill battle to convince them they should, especially if they find this new experience more useful. Legislation may be a way to solve that problem, but we've long left discussing the URL bar at that point. Edit: Also I genuinely don't think collecting end-user data is the primary goal of the Chrome team with this change, although I agree it's a likely side-effect. I think they are trying to create a better end-user experience, even if you and I don't feel that it is better for us (nerds) in particular :)
    - dylan604 5y ago
      So how is typing into the text field a full URL like 'example.com' and getting a search result better for the user than going to the damn url that was entered? If I was actually wanting to search for information about the URL provided, then the result is expected. However, if I just want to go to the damn url, it is not useful at all. Now, in this unified input that you seem complacent with, how do I avoid the step of search results when I just want to view a specific website?
      - coldpie 5y ago
        I've said several times I agree with your discomfort with the idea, so please chill out a bit :) Also, I didn't say google wants to kill the URL bar. I said google wants to kill the URL. So you wouldn't type in "example.com", you would do something else to get to whatever content you wanted from what used to be called "example.com". I don't know what the replacement for URLs will be, and it seems neither does Google (yet), but I'm at least open to the idea that there may be a better idea. Some further reading: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-rid-of-urls-but-doesnt-know-what-to-use-instead/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-... https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > at the same time I find anecdotes like this comment elsewhere in this thread[1] compelling I don't. As I replied to that post directly, the URL bar is not like the choke lever on a car, but more like the steering wheel or navigation input. It's the UI element that is used to communicate user's goals to the machine - not some incidental control of a subsystem that gets automated away.
  - coldpie 5y ago
    Google is suggesting replacing the URL entirely. URLs have real problems, which are genuinely really hard to solve. They're also designed for a subset of web content, and a lot of modern web content does not fit into the URL scheme very well. I don't know if Google's replacement will be better, but I am at least willing to hear them out once they have a proposal.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      I'd be happy to hear them out too. Much less happy with them just slowly, piece by piece, making their vision happen without "public consultation", just by the virtue of being the dominant browser vendor.
      - coldpie 5y ago
        I don't think they're trying to "make their vision happen," I think they're trying to solve real issues people have with URLs. Some of their solutions don't work, as stated in the article I linked original, but I don't think they're doing anything nefarious. They're trying to serve their users, the vast majority of whom have no idea what a URL is.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > I don't think they're trying to "make their vision happen," I think they're trying to solve real issues people have with URLs. I think you're sadly misguided and, frankly, scaringly naïve.

Tostino 5y ago

Well I just learned how to stop Chrome from hiding the https:// https:// at the start of URLs from that link, so thank you. I really hate what Google is doing in this area with their immense power over the web. It may be more friendly for those who just don't care how computers work and just want their Facebook button, but it's very hostile for those who do know how they work.

nathancahill 5y ago

iOS and now Safari only display the domain, so not great either.

denton-scratch 5y ago

URLs are awful; I think they are a bodge. I think the same about domain names, and the whole DNS system. I mean, I think the DNS was a brilliant invention; it saved you having to memorise the IP address of every site you visited. But talking someone through entering a URL over the phone is a bit like fixing printer problems remotely; it feels like the early '80s. But I'd prefer real URL bars, rather than a field that doesn't know whether you're entering a URL or search-terms.

dylan604 5y ago
If you're talking about telling someone over the phone how to enter example.com/specificpage.ext?key1=val1&key2=val2&key3=ABCDEFG0123456789, I'd agree that is painful and hopefully not necessary. Telling someone to enter example.com into the URL bar, click on the specificpage link, then select the correct information for the printer you have is much easier
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  That is what I was talking about; pretty good example, except the missing protocol and "://". I'm remembering the difficulty of explaining what is a forward slash and what is a backward slash. After all, they both lean forward - one leads with its feet, the other with its head. It doesn't help if your contact is using a different keyboard from you. You have to keep asking them to read it back to you. I still have to do this occasionally; it feels like swimming through treakle. Edit: Oh, and then there's people who don't know what "colon" means. And "hash" and "pound" have different meanings depending where you are. At least in this country, punctuation is less and less emphasised. I had to teach my kids to punctutate myself, and I suspect I'm the only person they use punctuation for.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > After all, they both lean forward - one leads with its feet, the other with its head. Leading with one's feet is commonly known as leaning backward.
  - 5y ago

dylan604 5y ago

Search and keywords are part of Google's DNA. Of course they want to utilize the thing that they do anywhere they can. Eliminating the URL means that everything is a keyword search to visit places. We've already seen how that doesn't work well with AOL. Maybe you're not old enough to remember it, so it sounds like a promising idea. The thing G has over AOL is that G has a complete profile on you that AOL never had. So yes, this sounds like a good idea to Google. Not allowing a user to go directly to where they want to go is just bad. It's like ordering a Lyft to take you somewhere, but the driver takes you to 4 different places that pays Lyft money to artificially increase traffic to their place before ultimately taking you to where you wanted to go. It's just a waste of everyone's time.

coldpie 5y ago
> Eliminating the URL means that everything is a keyword search to visit places. I don't think you can jump to that conclusion. For example I can come up with an idea that removes URLs without going through google. Imagine a new protocol where the user types in something like "john's pizza cafe; order a pizza". My local pizza joint is registered in a DNS-like system and handles the query directly with some commodity search-like system, never going through google; or the pizza joint offloads the query to some 3rd party which crawls their site and handles the resolution. (This is just some dumb idea I came up with off the top of my head; please don't nit-pick it to pieces. Wait for Google's proposal to come out and nit-pick that.) Every internet query going through google would be bad, sure. But google isn't proposing that... yet :)
- dylan604 5y ago
  > please don't nit-pick it to pieces. that's not how this works. if you don't wont opinions, don't post an idea to the internet. you've just replaced a working DNS system with a DNS system based on best guess or worse requiring a small biz to register with multiple DNS like systems. What happens when competitor beats you to those multiple registration points? >But google isn't proposing that... yet :) Why in the world would you think that google would do anything that did not use their system? That's just not based in reality one bit.

kccqzy 5y ago

Safari has done that many years ago. I don't recall it being a point of discussion, let alone a full article.