
Burying the URL - alxndr
http://www.allenpike.com/2014/burying-the-url/
======
paulirish
This is a new UI experiment that's deployed to a small fraction of users.
We're looking at a few key metrics to see if this change is a net positive for
Chrome users. (I imagine it may help defend against phishing).

My personal opinion is that it's a very bad change and runs anti-thetical to
Chrome's goals. I hope the data backs that up as well.

But regardless, this change is far from shipping as the new default behavior
and the reaction here will certainly have an impact on the feature's future.
As mentioned, please feel free to disable it at chrome://flags/#origin-chip-
in-omnibox

~~~
blablabla123
It's funny that people say not relying on URLs would be anti-web. IMHO this
causation is made only on a selection of empirical observations. In fact I
think, you could also draw other conclusions from empirical observations.

Let's look at REST. Everybody is using it for HTTP APIs, or to be precise:
everybody pretends to use it. Because, as many know, a REST API is only a true
REST API, if it follows the HATEOAS paradigm. A paradigm which is in fact
really cool. But why do we think it's cool? Because Roy Fielding found in his
thesis that the (human) web is basically HATEOAS. He says the web is so
successfully because of that.

But in reality... Hardly any HTTP API uses HATEOAS. In fact many popular APIs
hide the HTTP stuff completely from the API consumers. (If everybody was using
HATEOAS, we would never have to update the client libs, right?) Something
similar goes for normal websites. Most URLs are not human readable, even HN is
an example. The URLs are just numbers, there was even a post discussing that
recently... Most News websites have even more complicated URLs, they are not
made for humans and thus to me something like memory addresses. The GMail URLs
(the webs most successful mail client) are also very funny looking, I wonder
if there are users who manipulate the URLs by hand, or who bookmark their
outbox.

I somehow like looking at URLs but am I supposed to edit them as an end user
or draw conclusions from their look? (And is Google? ;))

BTW: URLs were interesting in the 90s for identification because only Geo
Cities and friends had domains. Now everybody owns a domain.

~~~
userbinator
_but am I supposed to edit them as an end user or draw conclusions from their
look?_

Here is a data point that may be of interest: On YouTube, since links are
filtered from comments, many users link to other videos by posting the "tails"
of URLs - some with "watch?v=xxxxxxxx", some "?v=xxxxxxxx", and some just post
the random-looking video ID part with nothing other than "see video xxxxxxxx".
In other words, there's evidence to suggest that a reasonably large portion of
the otherwise "computer-illiterate" have at least a basic understanding of how
URLs work and will edit them manually to get what they want.

Edit: or to put it another way, there are people who, upon having made
extensive use of YouTube (or possibly other sites), have been able to notice
the patterns in all of its URLs, and use that knowledge to succinctly name a
video, without explicitly giving the entire link. They are also implicitly
teaching others about this knowledge in the process. This is a perfect example
of the kind of learning experience that would be deprived from those whose
browser hid the path in URLs.

~~~
blablabla123
Yeah and the "otherwise computer-illiterate" may also think: oh wow, this is a
cool feature I should rely on. Eventhough you can just paste the Youtube URL
into the comment field and get a nicely formatted link.

For me this is another evidence that the main argument is broken. Youtube is
super successful but in fact it is really restrictive when it comes to
hyperlinking and mashing things together.

Update: just for clarification because of the downvotes, Youtube does not
filter Youtube urls.

~~~
userbinator
They might've changed it with the new comments system, but I know that links
of any sort were completely disallowed not long ago. Nevertheless, I still see
the posting of bare video IDs in many recent comments.

(I've basically never participated in YT comment discussions. There's
definitely a lot of idiocy, but it's also interesting to just observe and see
the sometimes surprising positive things like this that can occur.)

------
greggman
This may be the reason I stop using Chrome even though I was a member of the
team for 5 years.

I NEED TO EDIT URLs. I need to copy and paste URLs. It was already annoying
enough with it's removing of the protocol because sometimes I make a typo, try
to edit it and it messes up and removes the protocol forcing me to edit it a
3rd time only after it goes as searches for something.

Even as just a user I copy and paste URLs all day long. Into FB, into Twitter,
into stackoverflow answers, into HN responses.

I don't even see how this is better for Google. Links make up pagerank no?
Links are what Google uses to be the best search engine. How is making it
harder for people to copy and paste URLs good for Google?

I'm sure I'm in the minority as a semi-webdev but dammit, don't fix what isn't
broken. Or at least give those of us with different use cases a way to get
shit done without getting in our way. Sure, this may or may not be better for
my grandma but it's not for me. I causes me frustration daily already. This is
only going to make it anger inducing.

~~~
drgath
> I NEED TO EDIT URLs.

I'm using Canary with this option enabled, and all you have to do is click the
domain box, then you can freely view, edit, and copy the URL.

All this update does is hide the path portion of the URL. That's it, so IMO,
this story is way overblown. Google isn't removing the URL bar, they're just
acknowledging the fact that 99% of users don't need to see 99% of the URLs
they visit on a daily basis.

Why do Hacker News readers need to see a URL that looks like this?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677031)

Why do users looking at Amazon Fire's landing page need to see this?
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CX5P8FC/ref=amb_link_412...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CX5P8FC/ref=amb_link_412650922_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-
csm-1&pf_rd_r=0DAD51W7AATA6WG081BY&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1786695002&pf_rd_i=507846)

Why do EBay shoppers need to see this? [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garmin-
nuvi-2555LMT-5-GPS-Navigation...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garmin-
nuvi-2555LMT-5-GPS-Navigation-System-with-Lifetime-Map-Traffic-
Updates/310943209506?pt=GPS_Devices&hash=item4865a8d822)

They don't. Just trim it down to the domain and call it good.

Oh, and it's worth mentioning that to copy/paste URLs, it's still only one
click away, because when you click the box, it auto-selects the entire URL.

Edit: As I review my post, in the context of this story I find it humorous
that even Hacker News trims the URLs I pasted because of how obnoxious and
unnecessary they are.

~~~
wwweston
> they're just acknowledging the fact that 99% of users don't need to see 99%
> of the URLs they visit on a daily basis.

While we're talking about things we don't need, let's include _this change_.

The fact is, for most of the last two decades we've already had a UI where
users who don't care to attend to the URL don't have to, and users who care to
notice can. What does this add? Nothing. But it does take away some legibility
for people who care, and discoverability for people who might learn to.

99% of people using web browsers really get _no_ cues from the path? Cite
please. URLs aren't high tech any more than the address to your house is, and
my observation is that even non-developers who are simply experienced browsers
pick up cues -- even from barely legible URLs mostly meant to be parsed by
machines. You don't have to be a programmer to observe that typing a string in
takes you to a page, or that the string changes when the browser loads a
change, and put together the address correlation until you start to understand
what a URL is without even really thinking about it.

Or at least, you _wouldn 't_ have to be a programmer to learn to make that
connection based off of simple observation skills if we kept the current
model. If we move to this new hide-the-URL UI, probably you would (self-
fulfilling prophesy!).

And sure, the web has lots of URLs that don't provide a lot of easily parsed
cues. In the interest of being a little less selective, though, let's look at
a few others:

[http://ask.metafilter.com/261148/Give-up-financial-
stability...](http://ask.metafilter.com/261148/Give-up-financial-stability-to-
move-where-youd-prefer-to-be)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+of+the+web+powered+b...](https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+of+the+web+powered+by+wordpress)

[http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-inc-earnings-q12014-twitter-
sessio...](http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-inc-earnings-q12014-twitter-session-
cautionary-language/)

[https://twitter.com/paul_irish/](https://twitter.com/paul_irish/)

[http://www.allenpike.com/2014/burying-the-
url/](http://www.allenpike.com/2014/burying-the-url/)

Do people _need_ to see these things? Nope. Can they derive utility from being
able to see them? Yes. And they do.

~~~
antris
> URLs aren't high tech any more than the address to your house is

When you stop by the local coffee shop, do you take note of what its address
is?

The users have an idea what URLs are, they just don't care.

~~~
MereInterest
No, because I know that I drove down the same street, parked in the same
parking lot, and walked through the same door. The URL should always be
visible so that I can glance up and see if I am in a familiar place before
putting in a username/password.

~~~
lmm
The point of this is that you see and compare the domain before putting in a
username/password. That's probably _more_ reliable than comparing a full URL -
the difference between y0urbank.com and yourbank.com is much more obvious than
the difference between y0urbank.com/?bunch/of/state=whatever and
yourbank.com/?bunch/of/state=whatever

------
userbinator
I somewhat expected this, given the trend of where things seem to be heading
with software these days. In the name of "usability" configuration is removed,
UIs are "simplified", and gradually the choice and freedom of the user is
degraded. Opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them, or to explore
and discover, a chance for users to _grow_. Dumbing-down software only
encourages more of the same.

The "senior trying to use a computer" image is interesting in that it seems to
imply that the seniors of the future will be just as clueless about how to use
the Internet as the ones today, which may unfortunately not be far from the
truth.

I predict that eventually browsers will become almost unconfigurable, highly
locked-down, and be less controllable by the user than a television. As the
article notes, "the URL will [...] that many users will never even realize is
clickable." From there, it's not hard to imagine at some point the decision to
remove even that "clickableness", on the basis that "no one will bother to",
and by that point the frog has been thoroughly cooked. Open-source or not,
almost no one will have the will or knowledge (except the few elite) to modify
them to make them work as they desire. Users can be more easily "herded" and
persuaded, if they have little knowledge of how things work; just keep them
consuming and complacent, because knowledge is power, and we don't want them
to have too much of that. Appease and mollify them with eye candy and
doublespeak. Welcome to the future of corporate control, mindless consumption,
and fashionable ignorance.

Sorry for the negativity, but this trend I find _really_ unsettling.

~~~
jpatokal
For kicks, try replacing "software" with "automobiles" in your paragraph.

The innards of a modern car are incomprehensible to all but "the few elite",
and its interface goes a long way to hide all that complexity. I only have the
vaguest idea how it works, and am perfectly happy to outsource its maintenance
to professional mechanics, because _all I care about is that it works_.

This should apply to computers. My family _love_ their iPads and Macs, because
they abstract away all the crap they don't care about in, in favor of letting
them get stuff done. It's a form of reverse snobbery to insist that no, my
grandmother actually should care deeply about whether she's searching via DNS
or via Google, or that my preschooler needs to understand the difference
between HTTP and HTTPS.

~~~
colordrops
A car has a simple goal: get you from one place to another. A computer does
not. It's a general purpose tool that is near infinite in scope and
possibility. The analogy is a complete failure.

~~~
pjmlp
For most people, "A to B" means getting stuff done, not hacking around with
the system.

So they won't care about the technology stack, as long as that spreadsheet,
text document, 3D image, .... can be edited, saved and printed or a game
played.

~~~
mpweiher
Glad you put spreadsheet in that list. "Spreadsheet" is also programming, just
one form of programming that by accident of history made it to "things users
do".

~~~
NhanH
Advanced reactive programming for mission critical computational task!

------
zaroth
Google heard of this thing called a 'Uniform Resource Locator', and thought,
"Hey, that's us!"

~~~
diminish
If you closely watch Google quarterly financial reports and their
search/content ad asset placements, you'll see that they are under tremendous
pressure to monetize the web to show the investors they do a fraction of what
is possible. Chrome UI updates often have traces of this pressure where search
is favored against any other behavior to find information such as bookmarks,
history, address bar.

Removal of editable URLs will push a few percentage of address bar led traffic
to to search.

~~~
bagels
This has to be one of the main motivating factors, to get more search traffic
and thus ad clicks.

If there's no way to enter urls, then all that's left is to search google.

------
cpeterso
Chrome developer advocate Paul Irish says:

    
    
      this is terrible. From what I can tell only 6 people have been involved
      in this so far. Going to do my best to stop it.
    

[https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/461737936078123008](https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/461737936078123008)

~~~
general_failure
Unnecessary powerplay from Paul. And leaking information which is outright
insulting to the 6(?) involved. This is a bad reaction for a developer
relations guy.

~~~
duncans
This is Paul's job: keep developers using Chrome as their primary/default
browser to ensure sites run the best they can on Chrome.

------
tempestn
At first I was concerned by this, but as long as the URL is accessible - by
clicking the domain chip - I could see this being a good thing. Most non power
users never directly manipulate URLs, so there's no real need to display them
so prominently. The _domain_ on the other hand is important, and showing only
it without the rest of the URL serves to significantly emphasize it.

As long as there remains a power user toggle to show the full URL, seems like
a positive change. Of course, I may be missing some edge case.

~~~
_zen
From an IT support perspective, it could become a minor annoyance. It's not
uncommon for support to request the URL or have the user manipulate it in some
way. Now they have to instruct the user to click on a button to reveal the
URL, but only after identifying if the user is using a browser or the version
of Chrome that hides the URL. (And if IT is ignorant of this new feature, they
are going to be very confused when the user is arguing with them "There is no
URL in the box!")

------
apike
It seems that the latest Canary has toggled the flag back off for now. If
you're curious to try the feature so you can provide feedback on its future,
go to chrome://flags and turn on "Enable origin chip in Omnibox".

~~~
jeswin
It may be gone for now, but someone who made this decision is still making
decisions in that team. Honestly, I went OMG when I read the post.

Dogfoodable Servo based browser arrives in Q4 this year according to
[https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Roadmap](https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Roadmap).
Probably the most important project on the internet right now.

~~~
Widdershin
Awesome to see that target. I'm kind of tempted to start learning Rust so I
can use and contribute to Servo when that day comes.

~~~
chrismorgan
You can actually use and contribute to Servo already—it just isn’t at the
day‐to‐day browsing stage yet. That’s what’s meant by the Q4 goal.

------
eyko
Hope this doesn't become a thing. URLs are the one thing that _almost always_
works when you need orientation. "Where am I?". It's no good to tell me
"you're in Amazon" if what I really mean is "what department". When reading
blogs, the URL can sometimes also orient you in time, not just in (virtual)
space - when the date in the path.

The worst, though, seems to be that it has been removed for a very strange
reason. It's not that the URL bar takes up precious space in the browser,
since it has been replaced by a search bar that takes up the same space. It's
also not that it's something that's disorienting or a distraction to the user
- as far as I know, most users have been browsing with URLs present in their
browsers since they every laid eyes on a browser. What's the reasoning behind
it? Phishing? Yeah, sure...

------
bowlofpetunias
Don't be mislead into thinking this has anything to do with usability. Well,
maybe it does, but that's not the driving force behind it.

It's about obscuring the workings of the web for one reason only: advertising.
Anybody who understands how the web works knows that advertising on it is a
joke and can not ever work if the users have the tools and insight to
trivially circumvent it.

Google e.a. have been working very, very hard at obscuring the fabric of the
web to stop people from doing that. Everything from killing RSS to gradually
turning the browser into a dumb box is a part of that agenda.

------
brc
Save the URL!

Phone numbers suck and are a usability nightmare.

But people are used to them and everyone understands it.

No URL - no decentralized web.

I understand why Google wants to place itself as the key search and directory
for the web. I remember AOL Keywords 'go to www.webvan.com, AOL keyword :
webvan', the ads would say on the radio.

But the web is just a bunch of content hooked together with URLs. Heck,
_websites_ are just a bunch of content hooked together with URLs.

I already hate sites that are not linkable or discoverable due to excessive
postback-ing and unbookmarkable deep results.

I will always seek out a browser that displays the URL. There are ways to
defeat phishing without obscuring the URL.

~~~
userbinator
The interesting thing about phone numbers is that they're not much longer than
IP (IPv4) addresses; I wonder what it would be like if DNS either hadn't been
invented, or was introduced only after the Internet had grown significantly.
Would everyone have used IP addresses just as easily as they do domain names
today?

Then there's also physical addresses, which have been around even before
phones, and from the point of view of computer science, they would be
considered a horrible "ugly" mess, yet people also seem to have no problems
dealing with them in their daily lives.

------
kijin
Yesterday, there was a large thread on HN about why Firefox so stubbornly
keeps the search box separate from the URL bar by default [1].

I think we found the answer. Chrome now looks like a half-burnt Firefox, with
an emaciated URL in a separate box from what has effectively become a search
bar. The same two boxes are there, only their sizes are reversed -- accurately
reflecting the respective vendors' priorities.

Expect Google to make more changes along the same line. What, did you really
think they were funding Chrome out of a kindness of heart? Now that Chrome is
a leading (if not _the_ leading) browser, it's time to make some money. Google
is the new Microsoft. They have the power to change the web as it sees fit,
but instead of safeguarding the open web, they'll try to replace it with a
walled garden. After all, what good is a browser if people use it to visit
URLs that don't begin with google.com?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7666688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7666688)

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a terrible idea. I understand from a product standpoint that anything
technical is a hindrance on the user experience, but the web is nothing if not
URLs.

It'd be like taking the street addresses off houses and mailboxes simply
because we had GPS now. Bad. Bad.

And I don't even want to start down the evil empire road, but I have to bring
up the fact that getting rid of URLs just continues to solidify Google's
desire to control user behavior. Click/speak a search phrase, see a list, and
go to where we tell you. The internet is just a series of back rooms to
Google's front door.

Don't do this, guys. I'm already half out the door with Chrome already. This
would push me the rest of the way out and start making me actively tell people
that Google is not looking out for their interests. I'm sure many other
technical folks feel the same way.

------
sosuke
This sounds a lot like AOL to me. No sense of the URL in there, just the
keyword search. It was a big hit with the non-power users too if I remember
correctly.

~~~
cbhl
Remember when TV ads would have AOL keywords in them?

~~~
rtpg
A lot of japanese ads just have a little search bar with the name of the
company in it, instead of a URL.

------
bagosm
This has nothing to do with a UI improvement.

The change is just a way to force users to use the "share me" buttons so
google can benefit by promoting G+ or controlling the flow any way it wants.
Its a good way to keep track of user flow/spread of links whereas copy-pasting
a link to an IM hides that information.

In general this change doesnt have to do with bad UI good UI just pressure to
use a more controlled web experience. URLs are good UI, they have extra info
and the more experienced user can even manipulate them to everyone's benefit

------
tszming
I worry it will be the same as last time they removed the http from the url:

Users: Okay, you removed the http from the url by default, but can I have an
option to disable it?

Chrome: No, just accept it

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467)

~~~
reidrac
It's funny that I have 6 open tabs right now and all them are https: so it its
shown. After reading your comment I thought they had reverted that stupid
decision, but they didn't :)

------
Swizec
As a power user, the only time I care about URL's is when copy-pasting and
when developing web apps.

I like to explicitly know what I'm copy pasting.

It offends my personal sensibilities to make websites with ugly links.

Other than that ... I don't know. I can't decide how I feel about this, but I
can't help but think that I really don't care about the URL being accessible.
Not like I ever do anything with it.

~~~
cgore
And that has got to be the most irritating thing about Google these days, they
mangle the URLs in their search results to the point where I can't get a clean
URL sometimes, at least not without some real work.

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FUniform_resource_locator&ei=1c1hU6v_Oqj32QWO-
YCYCg&usg=AFQjCNFVKoOa_HlcuDeUu8wYS_g70me4Kw&sig2=v75CbZ4xQToPFkcVQfCntg&bvm=bv.65788261,d.b2I)

Instead of

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator)

Is really irritating.

~~~
rasz_pl
[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/47300](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/47300)

------
zacinbusiness
When did people become so sensitive such that a URL is "ugly" or in some way
unpleasant to look at? Do people really spend that much time with their eyes
that high up in the window? And how is this more secure? I can't see the URL
of the site I'm visiting...so that makes it more safe?

------
qwerty_asdf
I don't understand what "chip" means in this context? When did I miss the boat
on all this "chip" business?

A URL has a thing called a chip?

What?

~~~
nevir
Chip is a UI term (that widget is a chip, names styled as blocks in a To:
field are chips, etc)

~~~
userbinator
Is there a reason to use that though? From some quick Googling, I can't find
any references to it. Also, there is already a term for a piece of a UI that
you can click on to do something, one that doesn't have over a dozen other
overloaded meanings
([http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chip](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chip) ),
and one that users would be far more familiar with: "button".

------
jatoo
You can still type a URL in when you want, just as easily as you ever could.
You can still see the URL, presumably, by clicking the button. The only thing
you can't do as easily is edit the current URL, which I rarely ever do.

Calls that this will 'break the web' are hyperbolic. You can still click
hyperlinks. That's what makes the web the web.

URLs are untidy, even for technical users, and hiding them when not being
entered won't hurt anyone.

------
takatin
I have origin chip turned on since the day it landed on Canary and absolutely
love it. Imagine you are running Sublime Text and forced to look at its source
code as it is executing in a panel on the side. Imagine loading up a webpage
and Chrome opens DevTools with the DOM structure of the page with no option to
close it away. While it can be argued that having a behind-the-scenes view
gives you a heads-up if something shady is being attempted, for a large
portion of use cases this design choice would be clunky and annoying.

I see URLs the same way. Once I hit a URL just load the page ( analogous to
compiling the source code) and show me the content (finished executable).
Origin chip does just that - the gritty entrails are hidden, but accessible,
if necessary, with a click.

------
drivingmenuts
Every change like this makes me think we're getting further and further away
from what the web was originally intended to be (and not in a good way).

It seems like most of these changes come from some suited marketroid fresh out
of a new paradigm meeting, rather than an actual honest-to-god engineer
wondering what would make the web better.

~~~
spiritplumber
Looks like AOL keywords....

The web ate AOL, now AOL closed-model is resurfacing.

------
theanirudh
Most normal users don't understand what URLs are, so I don't think this is a
bad thing. This actually makes the UI more consistent; the address bar is
always a way to search or go to a URL.

An anecdote: my friends girlfriend was reading an article on mobile safari and
wanted my friend to read it. Instead of sharing the URL, she actually took
screenshots and messaged it to him! We both found this fascinating! I keep
seeing this sort of behaviour on Twitter and Facebook where people share
screenshots of tweets and posts instead of the URLs.

~~~
ekianjo
> Instead of sharing the URL, she actually took screenshots and messaged it to
> him! We both found this fascinating! I keep seeing this sort of behaviour on
> Twitter and Facebook where people share screenshots of tweets and posts
> instead of the URLs.

That's quite convoluted, and makes people look retarded :P

~~~
theanirudh
That just goes to show that URLs are a layer of indirection that people just
don't get. Screenshots/photos are easy: Im seeing something, if I send this,
they see the same thing.

------
WWLink
From the description of it: I already fucking hate the feature.

Moreso, I also hate the morons that make sites so heavily embedded in crappy
javascript that you can't just copy the link and paste it in another window
(or to someone else). Seriously? You're incompetent! Stop making websites like
that!

~~~
1stop
That's right, people should limit what culture they produce in order to make
sure WWLink isn't upset.

Alternatively, people can do what they like, and if linkable URLs are superior
then things will trend that way anyway.

------
jacquesm
Bad move. A URL is a mental 'place' on the internet, you are somewhere and
when you click a link you 'go' somewhere else. That feeling has been ingrained
in the heads of the millions of users. Removing this will cause people to
literally feel lost. The page does not currently tell you where you are, you
already have that information and it is rightly 'out of band', there are
matters of trust involved as well here.

------
nevir
If you click the chip, it reveals the URL, too.

May not be great, but it's not completely gone (which the article seems to
indicate).

~~~
tehwebguy
Yeah and I'm sure CMD+L still works.

Still, I can't imagine it will make web dev easier if the URL isn't always
plainly visible.

------
ejain
Burying the URL makes it less likely that a beginner will ever advance to be a
power user.

------
ancarda
It needs to work more like how Explorer works; Show many boxes but reveal the
full path when clicked anywhere. To be honest, it would be nice if it
displayed a box for each part of a URL:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Desktop-SATA-Drive-
Green/dp/B008Y...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Desktop-SATA-Drive-
Green/dp/B008YAHW6I/)

Turn into this:

[amazon.co.uk] WD-Desktop-SATA-Drive-Green > dp > B008YAHW6I

That would encourage cleaner URLs while exposing the whole thing (">" is just
"/"). Perhaps an API could be created to tweak them a bit. I'm not entirely
sure how to handle GET params though. A box for each parameter? One box with
all of them? As for clicking the first box, it has to open up the panel that
normally opens if you click on the padlock / paper so it's still one click to
configure cookies / see certificates and not two.

Right now I don't like the implementation as the URL is too hidden but I do
like the idea; this will make it a bit harder to do phishing. Honestly, the
old approach was the right idea too; dim the rest of the URL so it's more
prominent what domain you are on.

------
amarcus
Wouldn't this make it that much easier to phish non-power users?

~~~
misterpib
I would think it would make it harder to phish. Since all you see is the
domain name, it should be easier to tell if it's not the right one.

~~~
zacinbusiness
How?

~~~
jimbobimbo
Instead of seeing a very-very-very long URL that may contain legit words and
pushing domain name out of the view, the user sees only the domain name. And
if the user came to the Bank of America, but the domain is some
hackedtravelagency.co.kr, it's more likely to ring bells.

~~~
zacinbusiness
But how observant are most people? www.halifaxbank.com vs www.halfaxbank.com
for instance is a very minor difference. Remember that people misread things
all the time, and the more comfortable they are with a string the less likely
they are to actually read it.

------
carsongross
In the beginning was the URL, and the URL was with the web, and the URL was
the web.

Google has gone insane with mirror gazing.

------
doctorpangloss
>Native apps, meanwhile, have been fairly dismal in terms of linkability,
creating silos of content that have no sensical URL.

It's a really excellent point.

Conversely, you could argue that URLs are valuable to search engines as an
indicator of relevance, organization and what can be crawled.

Apps don't merely siloize their content—they break the most powerful way in
recent history to decide if it's valuable.

------
chacham15
Along with other people, I believe that the URL is engrained into a lot of
what we do. Think of all the services that interact with urls: twitter,
facebook, pinterest, stackoverflow, hacker news, gMail, etc. People might
complain about the extra "meaningless cruft" after the domain, but
psychologically it is what tells me that two pages are different. After a
while of not seeing the full url, it becomes less apparent that the url
contains state at all. That is not a good thing. All those services that
people share URLs with become more confusing. All of a sudden, what you put
into the box isnt where it goes.

I realize that I have an anti-change bias, so lets look at the pros vs cons:
pros - people know what site they are on, have a little more space in the user
bar, cons - all of the above. Which do people care about more? Im betting the
latter.

Extra note: IMO, the solution to "cruft" is not "remove it", but rather, "make
it readable".

------
logicallee
(This has now been removed, according to an update by the author.)

The fundamental idea isn't all that bad. But look, even in the 300px image you
still have room to show more:

[http://i1.wp.com/garybacon.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Sc...](http://i1.wp.com/garybacon.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-
Shot-2014-04-30-at-10.17.21-AM.png?resize=300%2C109)

le.

So while I know I want to enter a new URL or search about 20x as often as I
want to edit or copy the current URL, and, therefore, I am fine with needing
to click somewhere else to "view or edit" the URL (default being that the
search becomes blanked) - on the other hand, no reason I shouldn't glance a
the full URL by default.

So I suggest that you show the URL in light grey and clicking makes the field
clear, but berhaps the domain name could be darker, and clicking that part
will meke the whole field editable/copyable etc.

It's a subtle difference but it could work.

I'm certainly glad they reverted.

~~~
leoc
If you want to see something useful in that empty space, the obvious thing to
put there is the page title. (And you don't need to show the URL text at all
to make it copyable.) User-visible URLs are a Bad Idea in general
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679423)
. If you badly want to have the tree-structured site guide that people abuse
path segments for, that can happily be implemented in some other way and
displayed in the same space too.

------
mingabunga
That's why I use Firefox. I got sick of Chrome's inability to autocomplete
url's I'd visited and instead sending me to their search page. Now they want
to remove it even more.

------
benaston
If Chrome stops displaying the URL, I will stop using it. Caveat: very small
screen devices may justifiably need clever tricks surrounding the display of
the URL to reduce screen usage.

------
curiouscats
I think it is a horrible idea.

I would guess they will allow me to adjust the view to always show the url in
which case I don't care. It is just one in a super long list of very bad Ux
decisions by Google in my opinion. If they actually don't let me see it, I'll
just use some browser that does.

~~~
noodl
Based on this similar issue where the status bar's display of the URL under
the cursor is obscured for a second or so, it seems unlikely this new
"feature" would be configurable.

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=59592](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=59592)

~~~
userbinator
It appears that was introduced here, while "fixing" another bug:

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1455](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1455)

I don't quite understand all the concern with "width flicker", when the real
problem is that _important information is being hidden_. Maybe they've always
been attempting to deemphasise URLs, and thus are trying to divert attention
away from that...

(Comment 37 seems indicative of their general attitude: "we get to decide what
you want, and you _will_ like it.")

There's an extension available to fix this, but it just feels terribly absurd
that you have to use one to _remove_ something that was deliberately
introduced to slow down the browsing experience, on the browser that Google
loves to advertise as being the fastest.

------
gettingreal
I like what chrome is doing with Canary Version 36.0.1951.0

If clicking the label reveals the longer version of the URL, and its still
editable, then this could be really huge I think.

I'll love to try it out.

------
jrochkind1
I work at an academic library in IT, among other things supporting users.
Supporting them using a variety of local and third-party remote web apps,
which integrate in some weird ways.

Users reporting problems LOVE to send me screenshots. (Usually pasted into an
MS Word document, yep). That's about the only reliable info I can get from
users trying to report something they believe is a bug.

At least when the screenshot includes the location bar, I can see what site
they are actually on, and in many cases with some squinting actually recover
the URL.

It's gonna make support a lot harder when/if URLs stop appearing here.

I have no idea how relevant this will be to anyone else, and it probably is
not a good reason to leave URLs there, but, oh boy, it's gonna be rough. We'll
have to actually try to train users in how to find and copy-paste the URL,
which we haven't had too much luck doing even when it's in roughly the same
place in every single browser; a future where we need different browser-
specific instructions, so we first need to ask them what browser they are
using, then tell them how to find and send the URL, at which point they've
already moved on and no longer care about the 'bug' they found before.... ugh.

~~~
DanBC
You need a "REPORT PROBLEM" extension that pre-fills a form with things like
URL etc, and asks the user to supply some information.

~~~
jrochkind1
Not a bad idea, but I'm not sure we have the capacity to develop and maintain
such an extension for every browser (every possible browser anyway, not
possible in some), and I'm not sure we could get users to install it.

------
allochthon
I would be upset to have to go through a search engine like Google's to get to
sites. I will use a browser that makes it easy to get to the URL; Chrome is
currently my favorite, but I would consider switching to FF or Opera if the
links went away, simply because I use them for so many things.

I wouldn't mind if all links were the kind that you see in shortening
services, though.

------
poub
Actually teaching people the meaning of URL never been a big issue to me :
they’ve always been able to understand easily by analogy with their home
address that a page needs to live at a precise location.

In fact even the naming of a file and the folder structure never been an issue
to teach.

Hidding an address does look like spam, not honest, cheating _by_ design
because the user doesn't know where s/he is without digging (clicking/taping
once or more).

As this information was there effortless, if it become an effort to find out,
then people are not going to do it.

One may think that information was therefore not needed on the first place.

One may think twice and say : an information visible effortless might be
needed because of its effortless nature. It’s there and part of the context we
use things. By example it’s needed to reassure the usage of something.

Why not starting to hide signs on the roads then. After all driverless cars
don’t really need them and for everybody they distract the attention of the
drivers.

------
underdown
The yandex (chrome) browser has been doing this for some time now. I switched
back to chrome because of this feature. /sadface

------
dangayle
I want to swear so badly. Removing URLs?

~~~
CmonDev
Just a part of "open" web trend: prevent new languages being added and stick
to legacy ones, prevent URLs editing - what's next?

------
sanityinc
Even regular users want to select & copy the URL, and paste it elsewhere. How
to accomplish this task when the URL is a button is unclear (source: I showed
the screenshots to my wife and asked her what she thought).

For this reason alone, the change seems like a big usability fail.

~~~
hussong
But you're not supposed to paste the URL elsewhere, you're supposed to hit
that share button to share the content on one service, and one service only!

SCNR

------
muaddirac
This idea (or at least, where this idea could lead) is actually a far more
RESTful approach to the web. REST services should offer a single entry point -
the root url - and the rest of a service's content should be navigated to
through hypermedia affordances.

The advantages are clear: the user never hits a broken page (theoretically) or
finds that content has been relocated.

The disadvantages are also clear: no more bookmarks, no more simple sharing.

Hypermedia APIs attempt to address this problem to a degree with various forms
of CURIEs[0]. It could be interesting to see a web based on that (imagine
href="hn:threads:buying-the-url").

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURIE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURIE)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
I think you are confusing discoverability with navigation. It's good if you
can discover all content through hypermedia, but why should you prevent direct
access?! It's like saying that there should be an indes in every book (yes!),
and therefore you should not ever tell anyone on which page of the book they
can find something relevant (wtf?).

~~~
muaddirac
> I think you are confusing discoverability with navigation.

I'm not. I understand why it's hard to swallow though, because I think a valid
criticism of the REST architectural style is that it removes bookmark-ability.

> It's good if you can discover all content through hypermedia, but why should
> you prevent direct access?!

Well, precisely because direct access implies that out-of-band knowledge is
driving the interaction rather than hypermedia. I would refer you to
Fielding's discussion of the topic[0] where he notes:

> A REST API should be entered with no prior knowledge beyond the initial URI
> (bookmark) and set of standardized media types that are appropriate for the
> intended audience (i.e., expected to be understood by any client that might
> use the API). From that point on, all application state transitions must be
> driven by client selection of server-provided choices that are present in
> the received representations or implied by the user’s manipulation of those
> representations. The transitions may be determined (or limited by) the
> client’s knowledge of media types and resource communication mechanisms,
> both of which may be improved on-the-fly (e.g., code-on-demand).

> It's like saying that there should be an indes in every book (yes!), and
> therefore you should not ever tell anyone on which page of the book they can
> find something relevant (wtf?).

Interacting with a web service/site is not like interacting with a book (or a
physical address), because there is no permanence as there is with physical
objects. Have you never tried to go to an old bookmark to find that the
content has been moved (and you get a nice 404)?

Anyway, I wasn't saying that this is all A Good Thing, just that the change in
chrome doesn't seem at all at odds with REST (however, as many have pointed
out, it can be at odds with usability)

[0]:[http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-
hyperte...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-
driven)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Well, I am no priest of REST, but I think you are completely misinterpreting
Mr. Fielding's point. That whole paragraph that you are quoting there is all
about discoverability, at least that's how I interpret it. I mean, he even
uses the word "bookmark", a concept which you seem to claim is incompatible
with the approach. There is nothing in there that suggests you have to start
at the one global canonical URI (which one would that even be?
[http://www.google.com/?](http://www.google.com/?)), all it says is that
whatever the initial URI is that you start at, the data you get back should be
hyperlinked, using URIs, to any other resources that might be related to it,
so that you can discover those related resources _without_ _prior_ _knowledge_
of _how_ _to_ _find_ _those_ _related_ _resources_, except through very
general knowledge about the media type that the data is formatted as. Really,
all that means is that a REST API that exposes a discussion thread and the
postings in it, say, should not specify that for a given thread, the postings
can be found as <thread-uri>/posting/<number> (because that would be out-of-
band), but instead the document describing the thread should contain the URIs
of the postings, so that general URI resolution mechanisms can be used to
obtain them. In a way, it's all precisely about making things "bookmarkable",
by using one common explicit addressing scheme for everything.

And that addresses can become dangling is completely besides the point. To
solve that, you need a more stable addressing system instead of just not using
addresses at all (which you really can't, if you think you can, you are
confused and probably about to create an even less stable addressing system).

~~~
muaddirac
Very good points, and you've corrected a misconception I've had for a while
now.

Still think my original point stands - that this UI decision isn't so
different from entering a service for the first time.

> To solve that, you need a more stable addressing system instead of just not
> using addresses at all

I think this is generally solved with wishy-thinking and redirects.

------
catwork
Part of Chrome's appeal is its as an IDE for web development. Technical
support is also more difficult where an end user cannot easily locate a URL.
Hiding URLs by default is going to detract from the value of Chrome for a
technical audience.

------
DanBC
Discussing this article on HN is weird. Most people here miss the point which
is "most users do weird incomprehensible things, and Google will tweak Chrome
to be useful to most people, not to the _tiny_ number of technologically
competant users".

Most people barely know what an URL is.

See also the time Google removed the + operator from search. Hardly anyone
used that operator, and it was used incorrectly most of the time.

It's a shame that Google do not release their test data but it's obvious that
they have a huge amount of user clicking and typing that they can analyse.

------
apunic
The post implies that Google wants to get rid of URLs the core of the Internet
but that's not true -- Google wants links, latest example is the possibility
to deep link into any Android app via URLs.

------
scottjad
If this change lands, then a couple minutes into helping someone fix their
computer you now not only have to change Windows Explorer to show file
extensions, but you also get to disable this.

------
blueskin_
Yet another user-hostile action from Google. How do people put up with Chrome?
Firefox may be slowly rotting (cf: Australis), but Chrome is driving the
destruction of usability.

------
Too
So now users are supposed to click the embedded +1 button to share a link
instead of copy pasting the url into their chat network of choice. Actually
I'm surprised this hasn't been built into any desktop browser or os yet as it
is on android.

Anyway, I think most people don't care about the URL looks like at all as long
as you can link the page somehow, the recent rise of all URL shorteners kind
of proves that, not exactly something I'm a fan of.

~~~
kalleboo
> Actually I'm surprised this hasn't been built into any desktop browser or os
> yet as it is on android.

Safari in OS X Mavericks has Tweet/Facebook/etc
[https://www.apple.com/safari/images/overview_builtin_2x.jpg](https://www.apple.com/safari/images/overview_builtin_2x.jpg)

------
MildlySerious
I can't befriend with the idea that a company that is earning its money with
advertisement is becoming the next abstraction layer on top of the internet.

------
wil421
>Where previously typing “ruby” would send you to ruby.com and dump you on the
Kay Jewelers site, now it directs you to ruby-lang.org by way of a Google
results page. Of course this benefits Google, but it’s also better for users.
Usability 1, URLs 0.

I dont see this as a benefit to users, most people I know dont even have a
concept of what programming languages are. If I were to say Ruby they would be
thinking of the gem.

------
charlieok
I have a compulsion to remove the unclean crap at the ends of urls that seem
to be for somebody else's benefit besides my own. Query strings usually, with
various tracking ids or unnecessary preferences. It bothers me when that stuff
is there, and it is satisfying to remove it, although unpleasantly cumbersome.
I wish people doing that stuff to urls would just stop. Let them just point to
the resource.

------
z3t4
What is happening, but going so slow we do not notice it. Is that the www is
merging with the application.

What annoys me though, is that we still use "word", "excel" and PDF. Well not
me, but everyone else seem to do it. The HTML was a good invention, but too
bad so few people use it.

Maybe hyper text sounds too old and and maybe a sexier name is all it needs to
become popular again.

------
ams6110
The original (stated) purpose of Chrome was to be a new competitor to force
ALL browsers to get better. In that I think they succeeded.

Now the purpose of Chrome seems to be as a data-collection and ad-delivery
platform for Google. Admittedly, many folks navigate the web by google search
already, but this is a step towards making that the ONLY way, at least if
you're using Chrome.

------
rietta
I copy and paste URLS on a daily basis. What's not clear from the article is
if that is going away or not. Is that what the 'button that most people will
not notice' is? As for security, I can see benefit as most people cannot look
at a deeply obfuscated malicious URL and see that it is not, in fact, their
bank's website.

------
ripperdoc
Would be great to see a proposal for some next generation, semantic URLs that
are more userfriendly (e.g. less machine friendly). With new TLDs, hashtags
and search terms in ads the traditions are already being broken down. Why
can't an URL be like a search string, just with some formal language behind it
to make it standard?

------
gcb0
And i thought i hated chrome enough from ridiculing me every time i tried to
copy only the hostname

Click url, it highlights the whole field, click again to remove undesired
select all, now finally highlight the hostname, copy, paste on your ssh client
and look like an ass for not noticing http was added to your clipboard out of
freaking nowhere!

------
shacharz
Did they remove this feature? I've just updated my Canary and I don't see it.
Update: Yup, it appears in the orginal blog post[1]. [1]
[http://garybacon.com/post/new-awesome-bar-in-googles-
chrome-...](http://garybacon.com/post/new-awesome-bar-in-googles-chrome-
canary/)

------
CalRobert
Is anyone surprised? Everyone was so quick to rush into Google's embrace, and
is now surprised to reap what they hath sown. Please, at LEAST use Chromium,
instead of Chrome, if you must use Webkit. The Webkit monoculture is have a
strong negative impact on the web (try browsing in Firefox some time).

------
sarreph
"to a tidy little button that many users will never even realize is
clickable." \-- Are you sure this is the case? The way UI design is moving
currently, users have become more expectant of subtle cues (i.e. iOS 7).

 _I would_ bet that someone who wanted the URL would click the URL-shortened
button.

------
vitd
As someone who hasn't used Chrome, I couldn't even make sense of this phrase:
"Enable origin chip in Omnibox". WTF does that mean? No non-technical user is
going understand that gibberish. I think it speaks volumes about Google's take
on usability.

------
pixelcort
I wouldn't mind this if it had breadcrumbs. For example,
[http://example.com/path/to/file.html](http://example.com/path/to/file.html)
would be four buttons (chips?) [example.com][path][to][file.html]

~~~
DougWebb
URLs are supposed to be atomic; there's no guarantee that truncating a url is
going to lead you anyplace useful. The fact that it often does started as an
accident of early implementations (hey, show a directory listing by default)
followed by a security backfill (damn, directory is showing; better drop an
index.html in there) which lead to a convention (better put something
meaningful at each level of the url, because people will try them and we don't
want 404 errors.)

I don't think the convention can be assumed to be true for any website to the
degree needed to implement a feature like you suggest. There would be too many
errors when people click on those buttons, and people would blame the browser,
not the website.

------
Tomis02
> Six years ago, Chrome and Firefox enabled search in the location field.

This goes to show that innovation is only what you can forcefully shove down
your users' throats. Years before Chrome or Firefox even existed, Opera had
this feature in 1998 by way of custom inline searches (e.g. type "g search
this in Hoogle" in the address bar), and later defaulting to Google searches
for non-urls. This didn't catch on until Mozilla and Google did it, just like
most people don't buy into something until the "right" person tells them it's
kosher. Software and hardware are practically fashion; outside of small
minority groups that see the value of a product for themselves, you need to
convince the majority through nice acts of salesmanship (making something look
'cool', or by simply using the 'take it or leave it' approach) to invest
(time/will power/money) in something that will help them.

/rant

------
pjmlp
This reminds me of a discussion with a university professor back in the
mid-90's, when the Internet started to reach the common user.

He was exactly doing a research in how to remove the URLs from the user view,
without changing the HTTP protocol.

~~~
leoc
Wasn't the visible URL originally a Mosaic "innovation"? It doesn't seem to
have been visible by default on WorldWideWeb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb)
, or on Erwise
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwise) ,
though it does appear at the bottom of the screen in WP's ViolaWWW
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW)
screenshot.

~~~
pjmlp
I always remember Netscape with it.

In Portugal we only got to have access to the Web around 1994.

Before that most of us could only afford BBS connections.

------
Grue3
Crap, I don't use Chrome (partly because of shit like this), but this means
Firefox will soon steal this "genius" idea and make copying/editing urls a
pain in the ass.

------
whatts
The question remains whether we (or rather you, the Chrome team) should leave
such a decision to some "metrics". What has happened to smart decisions, bold
moves and instinct?

------
Yardlink
The extra bits of the URL absolutely should be hidden from the user. Whether
this method and at this point in history is going to turn out well is a
different story since there are still a lot of hackers that like to edits URL
to work around other problems (eg fixing broken links, trying to navigate a
confusing site). Nonetheless, the clear proof that it should be hidden is that
you don't purposely display the URL or any other bits of computer code on your
website or application. If Chrome ends up doing this, are you going to change
the titles or first lines of your web pages to be the URLs? No, you're not,
because almost none of your users want that.

~~~
userbinator
It's not just "bits of computer code". A URL is almost exactly like an address
in the physical world. In fact, the reason that it's called an "address bar",
and although the browser used to actually label it "Address" but that has -
unfortunately - disappeared, is because that's precisely what it is.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
I think we should hide zip codes from users, those are just "computer codes",
after all!11

------
sinned
Well, the location bar has always been one of Google's biggest competitors,
which was pretty much won by Google after they integrated search. This is the
next step...

------
TerraHertz
Brilliant idea! And while we are going about removing unsightly, brain-
straining details from every UI, let's remove all street signs, house numbers,
highway exit signs, and so on. Also, hide all place names on all maps, Because
who needs that complicated excessively detailed noise?

Instead at any time we can just call one of the ubiquitous Google-taxis, and
ask it to take us to the place we can vaguely describe by some approximate
references. When we get there, if it wasn't where we wanted to go, well that
was our fault for not being more specific. We should try the Google-taxi
again. But it might take a while to be sure it wasn't where we wanted,
since... no visible address!

Seriously, this isn't just the stupidest browser-change idea ever. It's a
_deliberate_ move to dumb the net down and shift web functionality towards
more total control by Google. You do realize Google censors search results,
right? So if searching becomes the only way most people know to refer to/find
a site, removing it from search engine results is equivalent to removing it
from existence.

This isn't about 'UI tidyness' at all, this is about dis-empowerment of users,
ensuring that naive web users never become more aware of how it all works, and
ultimately about Control.

Personally I use full URLs all the time. I keep lists of article URLs in text
files (like these:
[http://everist.org/archives/links/](http://everist.org/archives/links/) ) as
well as saving articles because they may disappear. I often explore in sites
by direct editing URLs. I demand to see full URLs on mouse hover, before
clicking links.

The 'hide/tidy the URL in the address bar' foolishness has been getting worse
and worse for some time, and is a pain. Chopping the protocol off, graying out
paths, shortening... I refuse to use a browser unless I can configure it to
stop messing with the URL. No I don't want it animated, with bits appearing or
disappearing depending on what I do. If you're complaining about superfluous
visual detail, how is moving and changing the visible URL around all the time
not worse than any static URL, no matter how long and machine-like? A static
long URL I don't care about is fine, but if it _moves_ it demands attention.

I can't believe the people pushing this actually expect to get away with
hiding Universal Resource Locators from web users. Literally, taking down the
street signs and expecting people to trust google and other search engines to
faithfully perform the task of taking us to places we want to go, without ever
trying to _influence_ where we actually end up going.

Just like Google isn't trying trying to force fundamental and harmful browser
functionality changes down our throats. Or coerce us all to joyfully become
Google+ users. Or force everyone to use their real names in online forums, Or
build Skynet for some reason (ref their ongoing purchases of every AI group
they can.)

Also, take that "It's OK, the URL is still available, it's just hidden way
down in here" assurance and shove it. Same thing as UEFI secure boot - "It's
OK, the ability to install some other OS is still there, you just have to
thenyzzzt em-thup jksdfh!" How can you be so naive? It's a process, a series
of planned steps, and after the nth little harmless step, the capability won't
be there at all. Most people won't even remember it ever existed.

All you people applauding this move... you've got to be kidding. Useful idiots
perhaps? Or part of the choir.

If this sounds negative, do you understand how negative I think the idea of
hiding URLs sounds? I'm having great difficulty refraining from using
offensive language. The concept deserves a large serving of it.

~~~
pdkl95
The people in support of this horrific plan need to listen to PHK's advice at
FOSDEM[1]. It may seem like he's talking about a certain three-letter-agency
in that talk, but his thesis is far more general. It's a warning about how
_frighteningly trivial_ it is to prevent a whole crowd of techies from
addressing core _political /sociological_ problems by distracting them with
_useless technical distractions_.

The question has nothing to do with what "URL" means, the various ideas about
how to make an efficient UI, or even the current knowledge and skill-level (or
lack thereof) found in the median user. Those are distractions.

Instead, the only question _any of you_ should be asking is if removing URL
visibility serves, in the long run, to educate and empower users, or if it
instead removes power from users - even those that do not yet exercise that
power.

Often - and especially here on HN - there is a tendency in geeks to avoid the
hard political and sociological issue. Unfortunately, some issues are
_inherently_ non-technical at their core, and attempting to avoid those hard
questions by limiting attention to the technical minutia, a political or
sociological choice _is still being made_. All too often, it is leaving that
choice to those who seek to steal power, making those that avoid the real
question into useful idiots.

Because this is a crowd that enjoys scifi, a quote from the end of Sleeping In
Light:

    
    
       "[Babylon 5] taught us that we had to create the future, or others will do it for us.
        It showed us that we have to care for each other – because if we don't, who will?
        And that strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely of places.
    
        Mostly, though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings,
        even for people like us."
    

Instead of giving the "large serving" of offensive language that this proposal
_does_ deserve, I suggest instead that there is still time to choose to create
a future that includes a free internet similar to the one we've enjoyed,
instead of another step towards the encroaching "dumbed down" corporate
nonsense that treats users as idiots and actual internet addresses being only
shown to some new corporate/techie priesthood.

[1]
[http://video.fosdem.org/2014/Janson/Sunday/NSA_operation_ORC...](http://video.fosdem.org/2014/Janson/Sunday/NSA_operation_ORCHESTRA_Annual_Status_Report.webm)

------
anoncow
In this build, if I type in a well formed url, will it take me to google
search results or the webpage the url was pointing to?

~~~
ajanuary
The url. The behavior of the box hasn't changed, just what it displays once a
page is loaded.

------
kukabynd
hope safari, firefox won't go this road

~~~
acheron
Agreed.

On the concerning side, there's nothing Mozilla likes more than copying
Chrome.

On the hopeful side though, they have remained strong in the face of combined
search+URL fields, so this may be one place they continue to resist.

------
moe
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indeed indistinguishable from malice...

You're treading on thin ice there, Google.

------
Qantourisc
Here is an idea: stop using URL's that are waaaay to long. And make them more
human readable.

------
Gobiel
Will we come to a "pay-to-hide-url" SSL certificate ? Kind of ridiculous imo.

------
vertis
Save the chil^H^H^H^H seniors.

------
locusm
Update: As of version 36.0.1966.0 this has been removed. Iterate quickly!

------
RyanMcGreal
We seem to be heading back to the days of AOL Keywords.

------
ape4
Without a URL its TV !

------
whoismua
Who needs the URL when you can search Google (instead of remembering a site's
name /url) and see some ads first. This is the real reason, not usability.

------
sscalia
Just further reinforces my opinion that Google Chrome is a Bad Browser™

Not "bad" in the sense of rendering or security holes (Read: IE6), but bad in
that "experiments" can be "deployed" to users at any time, and a company with
the aspergian-tendences of Google has control over that.

