
Google Wants to Kill the URL - LopRabbit
https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/
======
pferde
> But over time, URLs have gotten more and more difficult to read and
> understand. As web functionality has expanded, URLs have increasingly become
> unintelligible strings of gibberish combining components from third-parties
> or being masked by link shorteners and redirect schemes.

There's no reason a well-behaved web sire (or application) needs to have a
complicated URLs, that's just bad design. No need to scrap the entire concept
of URLs because some people use it improperly.

~~~
cwkoss
Yeah, I think Google could accomplish a similar result by publishing a 'nice
URL' standard, where your page can be dinged on SEO if it does not conform.

Getting rid of the thousands of ugly URLs used by their own products could
also go a long way...

~~~
Reedx
I'd be curious to see what people would consider that to be.

Using HN as an example, what would the nice URL look like for this page?

~~~
pferde
There's not much room for improvement there. However, the page I am writing
this reply on could - it's:
<[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=17913014&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=17913014&goto=item%3Fid%3D17911009%2317913014>),
which is getting ugly.

The prime candidates for URL deuglification would be sites like amazon.com:
[https://www.amazon.com/Bushnell-Falcon-133410-Binoculars-
Bla...](https://www.amazon.com/Bushnell-Falcon-133410-Binoculars-
Black/dp/B00004TBLW?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=e783a840-dc64-47f3-93ad-50aaa33da140&pf_rd_r=0YK0VWY7DVGGMPH0EG9E)

I mean, what the hell are all those identifiers, and why should anyone besides
amazon.com's internal staff even see them?

~~~
merb
actually your amazon link is a reflink, the whole amazon link is just:

[https://www.amazon.com/Bushnell-Falcon-133410-Binoculars-
Bla...](https://www.amazon.com/Bushnell-Falcon-133410-Binoculars-
Black/dp/B00004TBLW)

which is basically the product name + model number + asin

ASIN:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Standard_Identification...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Standard_Identification_Number)

Link can also be shortened to just the asin. (ASIN = ISBN applied to
everything)

~~~
pferde
Thanks for the info, but the link I pasted was taken by just going to
www.amazon.com front page, and copying the link for the "Deal of the day"
product I saw there. So it's the link all customers see when they click on the
products, and no amount of explaining what it is makes it go away, or
justifies it being there in the first place.

Still, Amazon is far from the worst offender. I have seen kilometer long URLs
that can span several lines of text.

------
felixfbecker
I hope this will make URLs more transparent and _easier_ to "hack", not the
opposite. URLs and deep linking is what makes the web great. If this means
making that feature of the web accessible to everyone, that's awesome. If it
means trying to get rid of it, that's bad.

For example, allow websites to customize how the URL is displayed. Every
website nowadays has breadcrumbs. Let them put them in the URL instead. Let
them provide icons and dropdowns for segments, but still allow users to
change, copy and paste the raw URL (like the Windows file explorer).

------
goombastic
At this point, I am beginning to believe this might be a non-problem for the
vast majority being framed as a problem for google to milk it somehow. We
haven't connected the dots yet.

------
pasbesoin
So, what, then?

All POST, all the time?

Seen versions of that. No, thanks.

Just hide the address bar?

We already quasi have this, where people just type what they want into a
Google search.

And if Google doesn't list it prominently, they are at a loss and/or use some
other site, instead.

People used to be totally overwhelmed by security. You know what? When it
started to impact them, personally, they learned. I'm continually surprised by
the conversations I now hear around me, by "normal people".

The URL isn't "too difficult". It's that people don't care about it. And
"tech" keeps trying to hide it further.

------
Someone
Reading the article, I get the impression all they are thinking of is tweaking
the way URLs are displayed (“We want to challenge how URLs should be displayed
and question it as we’re figuring out the right way to convey identity.")

I think a simple improvement would be to bolden the domain name in a URL.

Browsers could also add some styling to hyperlinks indicating whether they are
to the same domain, to another domain that user trusts (for example because a
login cookie has been set on its domain), but I expected diminishing returns
on that. Even if it can be done reliably from a technical point of view, users
won’t learn to discriminate multiple kinds of links.

~~~
dfabulich
> _I think a simple improvement would be to bolden the domain name in a URL._

They already did that. If you open Chrome right now, you'll see that the non-
domain part is greyed out. It doesn't help much.

------
nunez
I think URLs will die; it's just a matter of when

Most people don't go to addresses; they go to sites. In other words, people
don't care about putting that "https" before they visit Facebook; they want
Facebook and know that typing in "facebook.com" gets them there

Additionally, most of today's browsing isn't even done by web browser; it's
done through mobile apps. That's why Apple wants to make the iPad the primary
computing device; they already have a market-leading position on apps, so once
iPads become the way that people compute, the efficacy of web browsers greatly
diminishes

Additionally still, Chrome sets itself up to use Google as its primary search
engine. Thus, if I type "facebook" into the search bar, the first result is
almost always what I want (facebook.com). As well, Google (and other search
engines) already do crazy-accurate location-based and context-aware searching
so that they know that typing "ford" in Akron, OH likely means "ford.com" and
typing "ford" in Toyko likely means "ford.co.jp."

So it makes sense for Google to think "What if people just typed the name of
the thing they wanted without having to worry about whether it needs "https"
or if it's a .com or a .org? What if objects on the internet can be located
via some other means?"

~~~
solarkraft
I disagree. URLs still save state in a standard, copyable way. I find that to
be very important and experience situations in which I miss them quite
regularly.

------
dlojudice
Reminds me the effort Douglas Crockford was making (still making?) years ago
when he was rethinking web infrastructure [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TwrABEAfTk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TwrABEAfTk)
\- 7m30s

------
mtgx
I wonder what is Google's _real_ reason for this. I have a suspicion it may
have something to do with Chrome adding tracking variables to all the URLs you
visit, or something along those lines. And they don't want most people to know
about it.

~~~
social_quotient
Tracking and AMP abstraction were the first to come to my mind. Without a url
you could AMP the desktop experience and just manage the entire experience.

~~~
walterbell
Google gave a demo where the browser address bar will no longer show the URL
of the web server (e.g. Google AMP), it will show the authenticated origin of
the Web Package,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16456025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16456025)

------
muhneesh
I think making web apps similar to the mobile experience would be awesome..
then we can have less startups with wacky names because they can't get a
unique domain.

