
Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar - vezycash
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/12/google-resumes-its-senseless-attack-on-the-url-bar-hides-full-addresses-on-chrome-canary/
======
butz
While this might be useful for a casual user, hidden URLs are a huge problem
for web developers. Asking for a screenshot from client is not enough, now
I'll have to provide additional instructions how to copy/paste full URL when
reporting issues.

Not to mention all possible problems with misconfigured servers when www and
www-less domains lead to same website, but some script refuses to work on one
of those. While it was easy to spot with just a glance at URL bar, now one has
to do additional clicking or opening devtools.

Probably we are at the crossroads where developers need separate, not dumbed-
down version of browser.

~~~
qwertox
I'm already annoyed by the hassle it has become to copy a substring of the URL
into the clipboard, due to the schemes being hidden. Nothing has been won by
hiding http(s):// as well as the www subdomain.

~~~
taylus
Them acting like this is some kind of user experience thing is the most
insulting part.

~~~
thu2111
But it is.

The URL bar is a disaster for end users. It's full of random junk that users
can't read so they stop trying, which means they can then be tricked by
phishing websites hosted on any domain at all. Research shows about 25% of
users don't look at the URL bar at all even when typing in passwords, they
navigate purely by sight, so it's impossible to stop them being phished. The
human cost of the resulting hacking is significant.

The fact that the software industry has routinely prioritised historical
inertia, the needs of web developers, and all kinds of other trivialities over
the security of billions of people is embarrassing. I'm glad to see the Chrome
team _finally_ get a grip on this and make the URL bar actually useful for
people.

~~~
franga2000
> The URL bar is a disaster for end users. [...] 25% of users don't look at
> the URL bar at all even when typing in passwords

"Side view mirrors are a disaster for drivers. 25% of drivers don't even check
them before making a turn." [I'll stop the metaphor here, as I think my point
was clear]

This change does exactly nothing to improve security. As for usability, it
just puts one more layer of paint over the underlying "complexity" \- and
we've seen before how well that works (see basically every part of Windows 10
for examples).

~~~
thu2111
As someone who has worked on the front line of the fight against phishing and
account takeover in the past, I can assure you and others that you're dead
wrong. Making this change was a recommendation I made to the Chrome team years
ago because the number of people who would reliably type in their username and
password to a site hosted on hacked web servers
(supershop.co.hk/account_login.php etc) was just so high. And when those
accounts got hacked, scamming and sometimes even extortion would follow.

Your side view mirror metaphor is unfortunately not clear at all. The side
view mirror is simple and performs its function correctly as designed. It
can't really be improved without totally replacing it with something else like
a camera. Now of course not everyone will use the URL bar even if it's
redesigned to work correctly. But right now the bar is practically designed to
look as intimidating and useless as possible.

Perhaps you're so used to parsing URLs in your head you don't realise it, but
URLs are a baroque and absurd design that nobody without training could
properly figure out. It's basically random bits of webapp memory and protocols
splatted onto the screen in a large variety of different encodings. In a
desktop app dumping RAM straight onto the screen would be considered a severe
bug. On the web it's tolerated for no good reason beyond history.

To give just one example that has regularly confused people in the past: URLs
are read left to right except for the domain name (the important part) which
is read right to left. You don't stop reading a domain name at .com, you stop
reading it at the third slash or possibly a colon, but that form is rare.

~~~
franga2000
As someone who has had to teach grumpy old high school teachers how to not
fall for phishing and mitm attacks, I really can't see the problem here.

The way I used to teach was very simple and very effective: there are 3 parts
to a URL - the first part tells you if the connection is secure, the second
part tells you who you're connected to and the third part tells you where on
that site you are. The first part needs to be httpS, the second part needs to
be the site you're expecting and the third you can ignore. They're even shaded
differently to make it easier to read. "If you're going to Google and the
black part ends with anything but google.com, call IT" made sense to even the
oldest and most reluctant people I've had to deal with. The problem was
actually getting them to check every time and not forget.

It seems to me that this change will not help people without training, change
nothing for people with training, and make sharing links even more confusing
for everyone.

Are you saying someone is less likely to get phished on "supershop.co.hk" than
on
"[http://supershop.co.hk/account_login.php"](http://supershop.co.hk/account_login.php"),
even where the [http://](http://) part is replaced with a red padlock and /...
is grayed out?

I see only one real solution to phishing: don't let users type passwords
manually. WebAuthN and password managers both automatically read the domain
and won't try to authenticate on a domain that isn't a perfect match. I've had
more success with that than any other anti-phishing measure I've tried
deploying (history-based domain trust, explicit trust on first use popup,
detecting unicode gaps and domains in credential fields...).

~~~
thu2111
Sure, absolutely. People understand domain names, they're found on billboards,
adverts, business cards, all over the place. And it's a simple text match.
Does the bar say "google.com" or "google.co.uk"? Yes? Then you're on Google.
So when it's simple people get used to checking and can be reasonably told
they're expected to do it.

The greying out and replacement of padlocks etc, the anti-phishing training,
it's all just working around a historical design problem in browsers. There's
no need for it to exist. Notably, mobile apps don't have this problem.

------
sorenjan
I actually wouldn't mind if the URL bar was replaced with a breadcrumb bar on
some sites, like news and forums. Imagine something like

Example.com > Worldnews > 2020 > 06 > 14 > Big aquatic monster spotted outside
of Tokyo

or

forum.example.com > Sport > Football > Spain > Real Madrid

It could then work like in Explorer in Windows 10, where you can press one of
the breadcrumb separators and see a menu with siblings, or go straight to all
news this month. It could use some manifest file in a standard format on the
server for the directory information.

Of course, this should never replace the URL completely, you should always be
able to get to it easily. But URLs aren't necessarily always the best solution
for navigation. We tokenize code and apply different colors, mouse over pop-
ups, and links, why should the URL bar be a long raw text string when it's
really contains structured data?

This Google nonses of hiding everything except the domain is not a good
solution IMO, it doesn't solve a problem and makes it harder to navigate, not
easier.

~~~
wyattpeak
I really dislike any attempt to modify strings like this. I find it invariably
causes problems in edge cases. What if a site handles slashes differently to
how Google expects? Where do GET arguments go? What if I want to modify the
URL? Breadcrumbs are great when each part is navigable, but does
example.com/worldnews/2020/06 actually lead anywhere, or is it an invalid
address for the site? I have absolutely no interest in Google being allowed to
dictate what should and should not be a valid address.

Probably worse than the change itself, though, is the tendency of anyone who
makes such a change to start playing fast and loose with actually representing
the underlying address. You mention Windows 10's address bar - it's one of the
worst offenders. My Windows Explorer is currently sitting in my downloads
folder, which is at "C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads". The address bar reads "This PC
> Downloads". When I click on the address bar to edit the address, it changes
to just "Downloads". What part of all of this is in any way useful to me or
the likely action I'm trying to take when I click on the address bar?

~~~
neycoda
"This PC > Downloads" may point to the same directory as
"C:\Users\Wyatt\Downloads", but Explorer may also handle or display
differently or with different options. I've had various issues with this, such
as not being able to copy the full actual path from the address bar, a sub-
folder in one of these "This PC" folders or libraries showing no columns with
no option to show them, and sometimes being indistinguishable from the Public
folder. The full path matters in Explorer, Finder, and browsers, and should
never be hidden without an easy visible way to show the full path or have it
always show.

~~~
csmoak
In Windows Explorer, if you click to the right of the breadcrumbs, you will
get a text input with the full path to the current directory. If a solution
for URLs were to attempt to switch to breadcrumbs (seems like it should be
site-configurable via a meta tag or something), then a similar click to the
right of the breadcrumbs could expose the underlying URL.

~~~
stOneskull
if you click Downloads, it won't give the C:\Users\User\Downloads path, it'll
just give Downloads.

------
enlyth
At chrome://flags there is one called #omnibox-context-menu-show-full-urls,
which I have turned on.

This enables you to right click on the address bar, and turn on the option
"Always show full URLs". It will always shows the full URL including the
protocol, but I suspect they will remove this flag at some point.

~~~
birksherty
Yes they always remove such flags later, does not matter if it's there right
now.

~~~
dgoldstein0
This is exactly what I'm afraid of. there used to be chrome://flags/#omnibox-
ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains (when I google how to make
chrome show the full url bar, this is the recommended answer) but it's been
gone entirely for several Chrome versions. I even toggled a flag to undo flag
deprecations in Chrome 78 to get this back but that didn't work very long - I
think this flag has been totally dead since Chrome 80ish.

I personally don't care much what the default is for the normal user, but I
want to be able to have my full urls.

------
jchw
OK, I just don’t get it anymore. I mean I’m a happy Firefox user, so it’s not
like this personally impacts me, but how in the heck is seemingly nobody
acknowledging that this has been the behavior in Safari for a long time now?
This seems to be a recurring pattern.

~~~
noisem4ker
I've got a couple of guesses. Apple is somehow regarded as being a pro-user
company, not having plans of taking over the web. Also, Apple users are
accustomed to UI changes that result in visual simplicity. Nevermind that
their actions result in patronizing the user just the same as Google does, in
their case those actions are more likely to be perceived as innocuous.

------
skissane
The other day, our 7 year old told me that [ is 5B and ] is 5D. I was quite
impressed that he knew this, and I asked him how he knew it. He told me it was
from reading the address bar in Roblox. Needlessly hiding technical details
from kids is going to limit their learning.

~~~
ceejayoz
Is that a _meaningful_ piece of learning, though? I’ve been doing webdev since
the 1990s and still look up character codes if I need them.

~~~
cameronbrown
Are you gatekeeping a 7 year old? Learning about character encoding from first
principles is an awesome accomplishment.

~~~
ceejayoz
I’m saying learning character encoding doesn’t support this:

> Needlessly hiding technical details from kids is going to limit their
> learning.

I watch kids learning circuitry via redstone in Minecraft on iOS and Xbox -
walled gardens, yet impressive learning nonetheless.

~~~
skissane
I agree kids can learn useful stuff in Minecraft, no doubt.

But when I was his age, all I had was MS-DOS 3.3. And I had to CD around to
various directories, DIR *.EXE to remember the names of executables, etc. It
was an environment that exposed more technical details, and kids who are
predisposed to learn technical details learn a lot just by using it. Windows
10, doesn't promote the learning of technical details to anywhere near the
same extent.

(I try to make up for it a bit. I introduced him to DOSBox.)

~~~
ceejayoz
Wouldn’t it be better to be able to devote limited learning time to more
useful things than locating oddly named executables, though?

It is a mistake to conflate “it was harder for me” with “I learned more”.

My kids can program more complicated stuff in Minecraft than I could at their
age. Part of that is having a tool that’s fun and abstracts away the boring
bits.

~~~
skissane
> Part of that is having a tool that’s fun and abstracts away the boring bits.

What is "boring" varies from person to person.

I know, when our son plays Minecraft Java Edition, he likes to play it with
the debug screen (F3) on.

He doesn't understand what most of the details on that screen mean, although
he is learning a few. (He was asking me to explain what X, Y and Z coordinates
were.) But, even if he doesn't understand most of it, he still likes it, and
probably sooner or later he'll ask me more questions about it.

------
loopz
Firefox became quite fast again after Quantum. For those of us who never
"bought into" the whole Chrome ecosystem, there's always been adequate
alternatives. Will check out:
[https://www.palemoon.org/](https://www.palemoon.org/)

~~~
gear54rus
They have quite an interesting conversation on github:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7w61aw/pale_moon_rem...](https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7w61aw/pale_moon_removed_from_openbsd_ports_due_to/)

I'd stay clear of that project and use mainstream Firefox instead. And afaik
they still don't support WebExtensions.

~~~
lysp
I currently run firefox developer edition - gives me access to custom
extensions.

------
PeterStuer
Suppose there never was an URL you could share.

Suppose you always had to tell people to 'Google it'

Suppose 'I feel lucky' was always the default, and the result was sold to the
highest bidder.

------
crazygringo
Safari has been this way since 2014. I've never seen any pushback on _Apple_
doing it over the past _six years_.

It's genuinely a benefit for the vast, vast majority of users, where the only
important piece of information really is the domain name, to check which site
you're actually on. And for more info, you can just click. Copying the URL
becomes no more difficult.

The URL path beyond the domain is as useful to most people as an IP address,
in other words not at all -- it's just noise. And displaying noise is bad UX.
Pretty much only website developers and administrators and SEO people care
about the full URL. Granted, there are a lot of those people here on HN, so I
understand the pushback, but we're not most users.

But at the end of the day, I don't understand why people seem totally fine
with Safari doing this, but not Google?

~~~
on_and_off
As long as you see the full url when you hover/click on the bar, I am all for
it as well.

If find some of reactions on this ridiculously hyperbolic "biggest attack on
the web in years" ? seriously ?

I get it, Google is a gigantic monster that does not necessarily act in its
users best interests, but that does not mean we need to bring the pitchfork
each time they launch an app update.

~~~
dhms
On that note, I noticed recently that Google search result links (on Firefox?)
get rewritten. That is, you see the actual page URL when you hover over the
link, but it's changed to their own redirect URL as soon as you click it.

I'm sure they've always been tracking these search result clicks, but I think
this is a somewhat new behavior, and I find it highly deceiving.

~~~
propogandist
Chrome sends back your click 'behind the scenes', whereas Firefox does not, so
Google forces you to click through their link so they can track your activity
(and if you hit the back button, you also jump through their redirect)

Ublock Origin can block this behavior. Here's a posting with links to more
resources on hyperlink-auditig

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#d...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#disable-
hyperlink-auditing)

------
AshleysBrain
Reading URLs is actually really hard - even for experts. This video covers the
problems well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wB1VY3Nrc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wB1VY3Nrc)

This is bad for web security, since the registerable domain is the part you
have to trust, but it's surprisingly difficult to figure out that part.

However I feel a bit uneasy about this since URLs are important and tell you
where you are on a website. I prefer Firefox's approach which emphasises the
registerable domain in the URL bar and fades out the rest of it, making it
easier to spot the important bit. However it's still quite subtle - it could
do with being a clearer distinction.

------
hkai
I am going to go against Hanlon's razor here, but doesn't the slow push away
from URLs benefit Google?

A few years later, instead of type news.ycombinator.com, you would need to
search for "hacker news", scroll through the ads and then click on the link.

So it could be a slow transition to inserting a sort of interstitial ads inter
your browsing.

------
scandox
I'm against this. But: it's 2020 and still a huge number of people I deal with
every day type the name of our product into their search bar and then login at
the first site returned. Most don't know the difference between a browser and
a specific website. It's all just a big Smush to them apparently.

~~~
gsich
It's $current_year is never a good excuse. $people not knowing stuff should
not mean that everyone should get dumber to match $people.

~~~
ubercow13
URLs are confusing though. I am a veteran URL user and I learned something
about them from this thread. Hiding them isn't necessarily better but many
replies here seem to be denying that they are imperfect.

~~~
alexwennerberg
Imperfect and stable+standardized is preferable to unstable+unstandardized, in
my opinion.

------
victorelu
This, along with the inability of disabling the async dns feature in the
latest Chrome for desktop versions (thus making pihole/adguard irrelevant),
makes me accelerate the change to another browser.

~~~
viraptor
I'm curious - why do you want to disable it?

~~~
victorelu
Because I want to use my own DNS server and block ads at the DNS level rather
than the browser level. With this move, Google has effectively white listed
adsense / adwords to not be blocked regardless of the network settings of the
device.

~~~
em-bee
this is confusing.

[https://www.xda-developers.com/fix-dns-ad-blocker-chrome/](https://www.xda-
developers.com/fix-dns-ad-blocker-chrome/)

seems that the problem is not async itself, but that chrome ignores the system
DNS settings and uses googles own DNS servers instead.

~~~
victorelu
That is a good point, I might have been pointing at the wrong issue in Chrome.
I have only seen this behavior happen since 2-3 days ago and all my research
pointed me to async dns being the culprit. I am really eager to find out if
this can be disabled in any way, but my Chrome time has come to an end with
recent developments.

~~~
viraptor
Seems like a bug. Some environments cannot reach external DNS servers, so it
would break resolution in general. This happened before and was fixed:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=265970](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=265970)
I couldn't find any report for the current issue though - maybe you should
start one.

------
bbarn
Why not just use a syntax highlighting approach on the address bar? Protocol
one color, domain another, slashes one color, query params another, etc.

~~~
snarfy
It's a pretty obvious solution, especially to any programmer.

I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where you have information,
some more important and some less, where the correct solution is to delete the
less important information. It still has importance!

------
kungato
I'd personally prefer if ot wasn't hidden but after first hamd experiencing
non tech savvy family members trying to decipher the query part and some
accusing someone of trying to hack them I'm for the change. The whole query
string philosophy is such an outdated hack. Today it's just thousands of
tracking qieries.

What I hate is how poorly they worded when websites use http instead of https.
It says "connection not secure" which makes people think there is a hacker
somewhere hacking their connection. What they should have done and must
correct is to make the wording "this website is not following safety
guidelines". I'm tired if explaining.

~~~
loopz
If you dumb down users, they become dumber.

~~~
kungato
People should not educate themselves on the details of implementation of the
browser or internet as much as they don't educate themselves about the details
of the car. We have many other complex systems with simple end user goals and
people don't have to care about the details. The Americans don't even have the
gear shift

~~~
loopz
What is the conclusion of your hypothesis though, if users become unable to
find and validate their services ie. like online banking, from possible
fishing sites or otherwise hacked pages. Knowledge is power. So we need to be
careful about making people impoverished or too reliant on centrally commanded
portals, or prepare to face the consequences.

------
m0xte
Wonder how long it’ll be before it shows the proxied URL on amp pages...

~~~
ShamelessC
I think they're already trying to force that at the network level instead of
the browser level using signed exchanges.

[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/11/signed-
exc...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/11/signed-exchanges)

~~~
m0xte
Ffs. I’m going back to gopher at some point.

~~~
Hackbraten
Which is soon to be usurped by Google because it starts with “Go.”

~~~
m0xte
checkmate google! [https://github.com/prologic/go-
gopher](https://github.com/prologic/go-gopher)

------
Orochikaku
A couple of Google Chrome devs talk about the issues surrounding the
readability of urls and their security implications and possible solutions in
an episode of their podcast[0]. I think they make a compelling argument for
hiding most of the url in part to prevent phishing however I do think they
should allow this behaviour to be toggled via a flag.

[0] [https://youtu.be/0-wB1VY3Nrc](https://youtu.be/0-wB1VY3Nrc)

~~~
mkl
Do you know if this information is somewhere more accessible than a 20 minute
video?

Hiding the https and www is already frustrating enough, and this change would
make Chrome barely usable for my purposes.

~~~
ubercow13
The claimed purpose is basically just to prevent phishing.

They explain a number of reasons why it is difficult for people to extract
from a URL the part which is relevant to security, ie. the bit that affects
who has authority over the page and how your cookies will be separated by the
browser. The cookie sharing actually had some rules I didn't know about as a
non-web developer but experienced URL user. They show how every browser is
already going some way towards this but they all have some problems, for
example Safari shows the full domain not just the important part.

~~~
megous
Looks like this will be great for reflected XSS attacks. Even advanced users
will not be able to notice there's something weird going on outside of the
domain name part of the URL. Perfect!

Basically any page on the website with this vulnerability will be useable to
show a fake login page, and user will not even notice he's not on the /login,
but on some weird path + ?_sort=somejavascript

Not that it's that hard to clean up url via history api after you get access
to the page via XSS atm, but there's still some short period of time where the
full url is shown in such a case, that may provoke suspicion.

~~~
joshuamorton
Stick "?jsessionid=<random 80 character string>" in front of the xss and no
one will ever look.

------
rkwasny
Conspiracy theory: This change is dictated by the Google AMP team that wants
to take over the world without us knowing

~~~
robert_g
> Conspiracy theory: This change is dictated by the Google AMP team that wants
> to take over the world without us knowing

I was just about to write this but I don't necessarily think it's that far
off.

With signed exchanges, AMP pages have the ability to hide the fact you're
accessing content through Google [1]. In 2016 Google wrote about testing
'mobile-first indexing' because more people are using mobile devices than
desktop browsers [2].

[1] [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-
amp#a...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp#about-
signed-exchange) [2] [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-
index...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-
indexing.html)

If Google can control the URL narrative (keeping users from bouncing off AMP
pages) it's just one more ability for them to be MITM.

~~~
donmcronald
I wonder if they’ll eventually hide the URL path from extensions (for
security) and serve ads off google.com. Even serving ads from somewhere under
google.com/amp would probably cause problems for ad blockers. Or maybe
extensions see the rewritten URL only, so CanSignHttpExchanges is a way of
changing third party trackers and ads into first party.

Also nice to see DigiCert helping them out, but I’m not surprised with how
DigiCert’s product lineup isn’t much more than a test of how much of a sucker
you are.

------
0xy
I disagree with the decision strongly, but I'm a developer and probably a
"power user". A casual user might not even know what a URL is.

Do you know there's a staggering amount of users who type "google.com" into
Google?

~~~
arexxbifs
> A casual user might not even know what a URL is.

And this will add a few extra hoops for them to jump through before they
learn, so that they'll never have to leave the reassuring embrace of Google's
ad trackers. How convenient. :)

~~~
criley2
I mean... not to be contrarian but does the average user need to know a URL?

Do I need to know an address to drive my car somewhere?

My knowledge that a place exists and I want to go there is sufficient to get
me there, without having the physical address memorized.

As a power-user I obviously navigate through URL far more than the average
user, but I am not convinced that say a 50 year old nurse using my web
software needs to ever touch a URL even a single time, or that it would be
beneficial to her user experience to even know what it is.

~~~
sethammons
Maybe a slightly better analogy: with the URL, if you know your address, you
can go straight there. With a car/driving, it would be like instant
teleportation. Not knowing the URL means using Google search, and not knowing
the street address means driving around and seeing a bunch of billboards.
Removing the URL bar is like removing the ability to teleport so you can make
sure people see the billboards.

------
guerrilla
Does anyone remember AOL keywords? I worry that this might be laying the
ground to do something like that. Maybe it's not planned or maybe it's only an
option they want on the table but obviously they have the incentive to do some
kind of "Google keywords" and this would certainly help with that.

------
jpxw
I can see the arguments for why this might be advantageous security-wise. I
just hope they make it easy to disable (and it remains possible to disable in
future) for those of us who are technically minded and are able to read URLs.

~~~
aclelland
To enable the old behaviour you need to edit a browser flag. I don't know of
any of the flags that disable Google 'engagement' features which have been
kept around over the long term. The flags I've had to set in the past have all
been removed after a few months.

Two recent examples off the top of my head are the recommended stories on the
new tab page and the ability to disable images appearing in the omnibox.

------
zajio1am
I would say that removing URL is also bad UI - if user sees that URL changes
with navigation, then it is possible to guess that it can be copied and pasted
to give a link for current page.

If the URL bar would offer full URL for copy/paste, but show only the domain,
then the feature of full URL copy/paste is hidden.

~~~
Spivak
Or you just hit the share button? I think copy-and-paste would be considered
the bad UX if it was new idea today.

I think user-visible _links_ would be considered bad UX if it was presented
today.

“Alright then you copy this opaque hundred character string into your chat
window, make sure you get everything after the dollar sign, or strip it out.
Depends on the site.”

Copy and paste is the lowest common denominator of IPC.

~~~
userbinator
_Or you just hit the share button?_

...which does who-knows-what behind your back, including possibly
communicating with a third-party to see if you are "properly authorised to
share", and meanwhile allowing them to subtly insert themselves into
monitoring everyone's communication?

Do NOT want.

------
pbasista
I believe that Google has evaluated it very carefully from all the possible
perspectives and the net outcome for them was positive, so they went with it.

I assume that they care more about blurring the line between the
"Google"-served internet and the regular internet than about losing 2% of
Chrome's usage rate.

~~~
guerrilla
> positive

positive for them, not necessarily anyone else.

------
rooam-dev
Google is grooming next generation of users. It wants to be the Internet, the
way IE (the E logo) used to be Internet to many users.

Can you imagine removing house numbers from Street addresses? "Where did you
buy that? On Main Str., but there wasn't any number..."

If the URLs are ugly it's not Google's place to regulate that, but website's
owner.

If this is to protect users, then instead of removing information, add and/or
make it more user friendly.

------
slmjkdbtl
The click/edit to show full url is a good and intuitive design. A lot of
websites just have terribly designed urls, with tons of obscure nesting paths
and ?x=y flags that users don't care about. Here's what I got from searching
the word "duck" in chrome search bar:

    
    
        https://www.google.com/search?q=duck&oq=duck&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59j0l3j46j0j69i65.864j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
    

why would I care about the op, aps, sourceid and ie? If I really have to know
the aqs value I can just simply click and have it.

~~~
userbinator
_why would I care about the op, aps, sourceid and ie?_

Because they may be tracking identifiers...

...which I could argue is precisely why they don't want you to know. I always
sanitise URLs when I share them with others, because of such things.

~~~
skissane
> I always sanitise URLs when I share them with others, because of such
> things.

Same here. Before sharing URLs with others, I often experiment with removing
parameters to find the minimal URL that still works, and then share that.

------
dependenttypes
The sad part is that Mozilla is probably going to follow suit just like they
did with the previous attacks on the bar.

------
pvg
This is a setting, in flags (i.e. not in regular settings, the whole section
in the ui is marked 'experiments') in the dev/canary builds of the browser. It
defaults to _off_. The article (and even its slightly HN-improved title) is
pure ragebait.

~~~
guerrilla
The setting will go away, as such things always do.

~~~
kyrra
There are actually tons of Chrome experiments that never launch 100% and have
their flag removed. They are experiments for a reason. This lets the Chrome
team iterate on things and try it out.

------
danjc
I actually don't mind this for the gen pop. For them, showing the URL is a bit
like showing the path to the current process in the title bar.

As a dev, hiding the HTTPS prefix is already irritating especially when
copying the URL. If you copy the whole URL, you're fine. If you manually
select part of it, starting with the domain, the prefix doesn't copy.

I expect this upcoming change will exacerbate this kind of problem.

Don't we just need a persistent dev mode that doesn't mess around with the
URL?

~~~
nerdponx
I see absolutely no benefit whatsoever for the general population. Dumbing
things down for people does not make technology easier, it makes people
dumber.

If your goal is to make people dumb and compliant, this is a great idea. Of
course we know that's what Google's goal is, because that's what keeps the
money flowing.

~~~
ubercow13
> Dumbing things down for people does not make technology easier

That's a bit of an absurd claim. Should my grandparents just be using luakit
instead of Safari? Are you sure you aren't projecting your experience of
technology onto people with a totally different experience of it to you?

>I see absolutely no benefit whatsoever for the general population

A benefit is reduced probability of being phished.

------
pragmatic
There is no company that is more well equipped to detect fraudulent domains
than Google. They have the most data, most engineers, must anything that
matters here.

This is something else.

I'm actually using Edge and it's not terrible. Multiple choices in the market
is good.

------
jmull
Software should be designed for the user experience.

Including features that help support, diagnose, log, test, debug, and develop
are part of that, especially for software that provides a platform. For
platforms, developers are one kind of user.

However, developer features should be out-of-the-way by default. Anything
beyond the domain is not meaningful to end-users and should be hidden by
default in the same way other developer tools are.

------
walterbell
This is likely about replacing URIs with "web identity", i.e. certificate-
signed content. The browser address bar would display the publisher name
instead of site name.

2018 discussion with Google's Chrome demo at AMP event:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923156)

------
simonkafan
Isn't this a good example of "feature creep"? I dont see any reason why it
makes a browser more useful when the URL is partially hidden.

It reminds me of a company which developed a product which was more or less
done. So the SWE manager and the product manager made up new (pretty useless)
features just to tell their bosses the devs are busy and the team must stay
intact.

~~~
tuwtuwtuwtuw
It makes their serving of AMP less transparent, which is a good thing for
them. I guess.

~~~
nerdponx
This is the only economically rational explanation I can think of. Unless it
ties into other user-abusive projects they have planned.

~~~
ubercow13
What about reducing phishing? Seems more obvious

~~~
guerrilla
Why assume good intentions when economic incentives (which we already know
they have) already explain it?

~~~
ubercow13
What are the other browsers' intentions then, who are doing almost the same
thing? What about the economic incentive of generally increasing trust in the
web and ecommerce, which is highly relevant to their core business?

Also consider the sibling comment about AMP - looks like they already have
special behaviour for that so this is barely relevant.

------
Dicey84
Can see this being exploited in some fashion for phishing attacks..

~~~
K2L8M11N2
Shouldn't it actually _help_ , seeing as the domain name is the important
part? Now users can't get tricked into interpreting the path as part of the
domain name.

~~~
hirako2000
Even if it does help in some cases, it's hiding the path, which in itself
could cause other vectors of attacks. Just host malicious pages on legit sites
where you can host and phish for clicks to it, faking the home page look and
feel.

------
princevegeta89
Wow, this is epic scumbaggery. I still stick to Chrome because of all the
syncing features it has across many of the devices I use, PC, Mobile, Mac and
my own laptop. I remember at sometime in the past they hid URL query
parameters by default, until the user clicked on the address bar.

It's so obvious this move makes it harder for people to copy-paste links,
which is a common practice, and moreover misleads people when they try to know
what page they're on lol.

test.com/profile or test.com/dashboard/favorites

or many other pages that look like `home pages` of websites are now going to
be misinterpreted as actual home pages themselves by users because of this
witchery.

If Google thinks this is a good move in that they can get people to land on
websites through Search and not directly, it's an undoubtable massive deal-
breaker for people like me.

~~~
n1vz3r
Firefox can sync between different devices too. More, you can even self-host
your sync server if you want.

------
blacklight
"Showing the full URL may detract from the parts of the URL that are more
important to making a security decision on a webpage".

Oh, really? As a security-aware user I really want to see the full URL to make
sure it doesn't look something like [https://big-vulnerable-
site.com/?redirect_url=http://my-mali...](https://big-vulnerable-
site.com/?redirect_url=http://my-malicious-site.com). I fail to see a single
use case where showing only the hostname or the domain increases the security
of the browsing experience. But by now I'm also quite use to Google's way of
shamelessly lying their way through.

~~~
oconnor663
> I fail to see a single use case where showing only the hostname or the
> domain increases the security of the browsing experience.

For you, a power user with presumably years (decades?) using the web and
general technical fluency, sure. This doesn't particularly benefit you.

The person it benefits is a beginner (possibly a permanent beginner), who's
needs to be taught to look at the domain name of websites before typing in
their password. This is already an unfamiliar and uncomfortable concept for a
lot of people, and forcing them to parse a long string of line noise to find
the thing they're supposed to check makes it worse.

It's very difficult to for technical experts to put ourselves in the shoes of
a permanent beginner. We like using computers. A lot of them hate it, but have
to do it to pay their taxes or make appointments with their doctor or see
photos of their relatives. We think the idea of protecting ourselves from
attackers is neat, because it makes us feel in control. A lot of them think
it's horrifying, because they feel out of control and exposed. Adding extra
little steps, or little opportunities for confusion, has a big impact on these
folks, and they need all the help they can get.

------
revskill
So i think the future of mobile computing is that mobile operating system will
be just a browser. This is Google first step. It's a good news, not bad news
if they're heading that way.

------
SomeoneFromCA
I guess Linux distros should start supplying patched Chromium then.

~~~
nieve
I doubt that Ubuntu moving to having Chrome being a snap is a good sign for
them doing the right thing with a custom Chromium.

------
ahmedfromtunis
If their goal is really to help detect fraudulent sites (the sorts of
google.com.notahacker.tk), they can just show the domain in a more prominent
way -- they're already deemphasizing the part of the URL after the domain name
anyway.

This is clearly not their motive.

What Google is trying to do here is to drift the web from its most iconic
components: the URL. This is the biggest threat to the web that we loved for
so many years.

~~~
Viliam1234
I assume the goal is to make sure that people never remember the URL and
always use Google to get anywhere. Most people probably already do, but maybe
increasing their number from 80% to 90% is still worth it.

If this is indeed the real motivation, the next obvious target would be
bookmarks. What can be done about them? Replace the bookmarked URLs by Google
queries? It would be an interesting functionality if Google could look at a
page and give you the smallest query that would have returned exactly this
page as a first result. Then bookmark the query instead of the URL. And if the
search results change in the future... I suppose, it would be possible to spin
this as a feature. ("Self-improving bookmarks" perhaps? You don't have to
worry about link rot; with latest Google self-improving bookmarks, your
bookmark will always point to the best existing page on given topic!)

~~~
ggggtez
Maybe this is just one of those pet issues that I can't get behind. Hiding
"www" does _not_ strike me as some evil scheme to prevent savvy users from
bookmarking websites. It just doesn't.

They already had the feature you are worried about and it's existed since like
1999. Do you remember the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button? You could bookmark a
query and it would redirect you to the first result for that search. It was
discontinued in 2010 [Wikipedia].

I feel like there are a lot more sane things to be paranoid about in the world
right now, but mandatory "I'm feeling lucky" doesn't reach my top 20000.

~~~
zamadatix
"I'm Feeling Lucky" was never discontinued
[[https://www.google.com](https://www.google.com)]. It just got moved to the
bottom of the autocomplete list that appears when you start typing.

------
Illniyar
The problem this proposedly solves is a real one but only pushing and
considering the most extreme solution suggests that it's not the real
motivation.

If the problem is that showing the whole url might hide the domain, why not
make the domain bold? or highlighted some other way? What about separating the
domain and path when viewing (but not when editing)? it's a bit hard but quite
possible.

------
tmpz22
I’m pretty convinced this is going to lead to more tracking metadata shoved
into the URL. I don’t know if that was the real incentive, that users weren’t
clicking links with very clear tracking or tons of url params. But id put
money down today that this will be the most significant end result. Thanks
Google.

------
Santosh83
Pretty ironic for a company that wouldn't exist except for the ability to
crawl and index URLs. So now only the domain and TLDs are to be shown. I
presume that a "full" URL can be typed once the URL bar is clicked though? But
any guesses how long until they remove the ability to enter URLs?

~~~
noisem4ker
>Pretty ironic for a company that wouldn't exist except for the ability to
crawl and index URLs.

It's called "kicking the ladder after climbing the wall".

------
azifali
I've stopped using Chrome.. it is an optional browser. Firefox is my Goto
browser at this moment of time.

------
li4ick
Whoever at Google is responsible for this, I suggest they read this:
[http://worrydream.com/MagicInk](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk)

I guess they forgot what "information software" means. I use Firefox, but this
is just bad design.

~~~
ptx
I haven't read it yet, but the movies in those examples ("Rainman Forever",
"Die Hard With More Intensity", etc.) sound fantastic. And they all feature
Jet Li.

------
lopmotr
I think web developers are so used to URLs they don't realize how ridiculous
they are. If you were inventing the web from scratch, there's no way you'd
require a non-human-readable string displayed in the most prominent position
on every single page and it's editable! How do people know how to edit it?
Each site has its own unique undocumented parameters and formatting. It tells
you something about the state of the page but not everything needed to debug
problems. Also, don't make a SPA with an unchanging URL because you'll lose
all the "important" value of a URL.

Desktop and mobile apps somehow survive without them. If URLs are important,
why don't developers include their own URL system in those?

------
StavrosK
Firefox mobile syncs beautifully with desktop, and they have a standalone
password manager app that syncs with your browser's password manager, maybe
you'll find it useful.

There's also an accessibility setting to always force zoomability, even when
the site disables it.

~~~
OtterGauze
I'm a Firefox user, but I don't see myself using Lockwise, it's too lacking in
features, not to mention the security caveats of using your browser's password
"manager". You're better off using a third party like Bitwarden or KeyPass.

Edit: Brain mashed together 1Password and KeyPass.

------
Gehinnn
This might be harmful to github pages where it would hide the repository name.
If they include this without offering an option to turn it off, I will quit
using Chrome.

~~~
curiousgal
I switched to Firefox years ago and never looked back.

~~~
GoToRO
I never switched away from Firefox. I am old enough to know that nothing comes
free, especially from a Big Corporation. As customers, all we can do is to
always keep a good alternative alive, no matter what.

~~~
fastball
Firefox isn't free either. It's just paid for by Google.

~~~
andai
The other day I heard Firefox described as Google's antitrust lawsuit
insurance...

~~~
sleavey
Hah, that actually makes me happy as a no-break Firefox user since 2003. At
least that means Google will continue to support Firefox independently for as
long as they're in the browser business.

~~~
hckr_news
They also support Bing

------
malikNF
Honestly at this point I honestly have no idea why a wast majority of people
are still choosing to support google's browser.

Google is an ad-company and will do everything in its power to change the web
to fit their business. You the user don't matter anymore.

------
bsdubernerd
Google munging the URL on it's own search results to look like a breadcrumb
bar is among the primary reasons I do not use google.com as my default search
engine anymore. I'm surprised they didn't do the same on the URL bar instead
of hiding the full URL.

That being said, if you look at most non-IT persons using a browser, the URL
is just visual noise for them: showing the domain prominently is perhaps (and
_just_ perhaps) a better way to make them take notice.

Not that I would ever use this for myself though. I already disable FF URL
formatting and "trimming".

------
scalableUnicon
I just hope firefox doesn't follow this trend. It was too difficult for me to
adjust to their "one click select all" address bar that I now use ctrl + L for
address bar interactions.

------
macpete
The final goal is to make amp urls look like regular ones

------
spiritplumber
Google wants to be the new AOL.

------
noisy_boy
I moved back to Firefox last year and haven't had any reason to switch back to
Chrome. FF has been plenty performant and even if was few microseconds slower
than Chrome, I will still stick with it because it's in our collective
interest to keep the competition alive. This ridiculous decision by Google
just made my resolve stronger.

~~~
darrmit
Ditto. At first the biggest thing I struggled with was less-obvious profile
support in FF, but container tabs and a bookmark on the toolbar to
“about:profiles” nearly completely solved that. Now I greatly prefer my FF
config and am glad to be free of Chrome decisions like this.

------
abzgPSw
Hopefully they are sued for IP violations again in Europe.

This is extremely sketchy, just stealing other people's content (as they also
did on YouTube for years):

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/21/chrome-tests-
hiding...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/21/chrome-tests-hiding-urls-
google-searches/)

------
jbverschoor
Well you have to do something when search and ad revenue is slowly creeping
away.

These are dark patterns, making way for other browsers, such as Firefox.

------
flas9sd
Omnibox concept could help mobile browsers - not that Google would give this
screen real estate easily away - but what if the address bar could serve as
site wide search of the current site at all times with no more interactions.
Absolving website sticky headers, sandwich menus. This could empower the
"native web" against apps on small-screen devices.

------
agustif
It's already pretty difficult to get a full URL on a random bug
report/screenshot.

This sadly will ensure this keeps being the case...

------
pkamb
This "URL eliding" makes parameters impossible to click and select. So
annoying. I filed a bug for desktop Chrome:

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=108440...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1084406)

------
h91wka
If at this point you still use Google products, while equal or better
alternatives exist, you get what you deserve.

------
goatinaboat
_Showing the full URL may detract from the parts of the URL that are more
important to making a security decision on a webpage_

I would like to see some examples of this because that makes zero sense. The
only reason I can see is to “dumb down” the browsing experience to reinforce
Google’s position as gatekeeper.

------
edeion
Why can't we just have two address bars? One for general "end" user that's
optimized to help them against phishing and all, another one that's just the
bare plain old URL? The toolbars are customizable, why not just add this
option?

------
fbnlsr
This is wrong on SO MANY levels.

I'm glad I've switched back to Firefox when they launched Quantum.

------
plerpin
Most sites use dynamically generated content with URLs that are essentially
meaningless. The path for this comment thread in HN is "/item?id=23516088". A
lot of websites append literally kilobytes of values to the querystring.

------
pnako
Nowadays when I connect to Google using the Googlebrowser powered by the
Googleprotocols to access the Googlecontent I don't care about weird symbols
like 'https', arcane concepts like URLs, etc.

------
tacone
Couldn't they just show the domain name in bold? It's that simple.

------
johnchristopher
Must have hired too much Gnome designers :). /s

(I actually like Gnome's statement)

------
PieUser
My concern is that Google will eventually remove this flag and make this the
default behaviour without any way to disable it. Safari, on the other hand,
has an option to turn the feature off.

------
nyxtom
This is a bad idea for domains that have usernames included in the url.

------
zffr
I believe this is already the default behavior in Safari. On iOS this is the
only option.

Personally, I don’t mind this being the default so long as there is an easy
way to change it to see the full URL.

------
kitsune_
This and AMP, I mean, it's clear what Google is up to.

------
macca321
Bring it on. Users not knowing the path means search engines not using the
path for ranking means a whole class of boring human readable SEO work goes
away.

------
HiddenCanary
Presumably, this is going to mean developers, QA and security testers move
away from Chrome as the URL bar is pretty key in many aspects of their job?

------
tomohawk
On many corporate networks I've used, its often far easier to directly change
the URL to navigate than to use any other means.

------
Tehnix
So Chrome is only showing the domain part now? Just like Safari has been for a
long time?

Personally I quite like it. From what I understand the main goal is to make
phishing attacks more clear to the user, since this is ultimately only a thing
the end-user can protect against. Removing the noise definitely helps for
that.

Having had it like this in Safari for a long time, I must say I greatly prefer
this over the older behavior---the only time I care about a full URL is when I
select it to copy it.

~~~
sdan
Safari has an option to include the full URL. As a developer, I need the full
URL so I turn on the option. If Chrome by some miracle actually goes through
with this, I'll try to see if I can get around it (because at the end of the
day, everyone uses chrome and chrome dev tools are by far the best).

~~~
mosselman
> chrome dev tools are by far the best

How are they better than those in Firefox? It looks like you did a thorough
analysis.

~~~
hirako2000
Chrome dev tool used to be far better than any native alternative. Including
Firefox, but Firefox has caught up. A tad too late as Firefox had, prior to
chrome, the best native dev tool.

------
dewey
This has been like this forever in Safari if "Show full website address" is
disabled (which is the default I think).

------
dreamcompiler
Is it possible to build a proxy that translates AMP pages to real URLs? Maybe
I could make my PiHole do double duty.

------
toper-centage
The reason for this is that Google wants to bully the world into AMP

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.

------
baybal2
I can not believe now that GUI design at Google is not staffed with passing
amateurs, and low end cadres

------
xenonite
Bold typesetting of the domain, the rest in regular font and silver gray would
provide a middle ground.

------
rawoke083600
Too far ! Address bar is part of "validation" for am I on the right site.

------
kevindong
For what it's worth, this is already the default behavior in desktop Safari.

------
tigerlily
I think I'll double my annual donations to Mozilla starting this year.

------
matthewfelgate
It looks better than their previous attempts to obfuscate the URL bar.

------
apatters
This feels like a good time to celebrate how I uninstalled Chromium from the
last device I was using it on last week. 100% Firefox now!

DuckDuckGo gets about 75% of my searches nowadays with the rest going to
Google. Still using Maps, GSuite and Android... Baby steps!

------
jarym
I know the average user probably doesn’t care much for URLs but I definitely
do and it seems a chunk of HN crowd are with me. Would it be THAT hard to have
a toggle option in the Settings so those who want to could preserve the URL?

------
philistine
If I were Facebook, I’d start building a browser yesterday.

------
seek3r00
Maybe, AndroidPolice should change its name. Just saying...

------
abbadadda
Use Firefox and DuckDuckGo instead of Chrome and Google.

------
jp1016
when you change route on angular/react and wondering why it's not reflecting
.... and suddenly remembers it's chrome 85, facepalm moment

------
danielovichdk
My next Web application will not work in Chrome. Easy.

~~~
vntok
Why would you want to block 70-75% of Web users from your web application?

------
acd
I am switching browser to Firefox because its nicer.

------
jtdev
We need competition among browser vendors to prevent/discourage these abuses.
Chrome is becoming IE of the early 2000s. I switched to FireFox ~2 years ago
and couldn’t be happier.

------
bishalb
Opera already does this and I hate it for that.

------
cycop
Google is dumbing down tech so new users don't understand the basics of the
internet. Seems like a winning strategy and the culture they have built their
company on.

------
neycoda
Nope, I want the full URL, including protocol, or at least the option to show
it. Otherwise it creates ambiguity, confusion, and a security hole.

------
irrational
Hopefully Firefox doesn’t follow suit.

------
EamonnMR
Phishers sites will love this change.

------
gamma3
Looks good to me. Nice UX. Normal users don't care about the URL and you can
still copy the full URL if you want to share a link.

------
brianzelip
Why are y’all still using chrome?

------
Grimm1
Breaking up Google or someone actually being a competitor sounds like a really
healthy thing to me more and more.

------
m3kw9
So no longer will I know if I’m inside a new type of Amp type page google is
planning

------
mrfusion
Can we all please go back to Firefox?

------
cletus
Another phrase I live by: "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

There will be some VP of Product or Engineering buried deep in the bureaucracy
who is pushing this, deciding with no evidence (or, worse, lots of evidence to
the contrary; believe me this happens) that it is the "users who are wrong"
[1].

It now takes something like 4 taps to get to the point where I can correct or
otherwise edit the URL in my mobile browser (Safari) as I have to go through
different layers where someone, somewhere has decided I can't possibly mean to
edit the URL so I must be wanting to select the entire thing.

I'm sure this same "it's the users who are wrong" from a handful of key
stakeholders that is pushing AMP. And for something that supposedly improves
the mobile experience, it doesn't fit on my iPhone 11 screen and _it 's also
disabled zoom_. This is probably because I've changed the default zoom,
something that gives me no end of problems but I can't control how bad my
eyesight is and I don't need a company telling me I'm wrong for wanting to
zoom. __There is never an excuse to disable zoom on a browser and browser
makers should remove the ability for sites to do this, period. __

I used to love the simplicity and features of Chrome. I once relied a great
deal on Chrome Sync. For years I 've used a password manager so a lot of the
need for that has gone away. Sometimes it's nice to be able to open a page I
have open on another device but I can also live without this.

I'm tired of this anti-Web and anti-accessibility SJW nonsense to the point
that yeah, I'm ready to ditch Chrome.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik)

~~~
ben_w
Insightful, but I am confused by the final paragraph:

> I'm tired of this anti-Web and anti-accessibility SJW nonsense

“SJW” must have a meaning I’m not familiar with, because _Social Justice
Warriors_ would be pro-accessibility, not anti.

~~~
psexec
How about this idiocy?

[https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-
blac...](https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blacklist-
blocklist-more-inclusive/)

~~~
tchaffee
Changing from blacklist and whitelist to blocklist and allowlist is one of the
many small things we can do that makes our black colleagues feel seen, heard,
and welcome in our workplaces. I support it. No one thinks changing language
is enough to eliminate the systemic racism oppressing black people in the US.
Eliminating that will require work and personal change. If you can't even stop
using black to mean negative in the workplace and substitute it with more
accurate words - the new words are clearer - then you likely are not prepared
for the real work ahead. I personally refuse to work for any company that is
not committing to that work.

~~~
krzyk
Why would anyone be offended by blacklist? Would they be also offended by the
color black? Or maybe dark mode, that is getting popular?

Or maybe offended by the fact that most pages on the web have light/white
theme?

This is getting ridiculous (together with github ditching the name "master" \-
[https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312](https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312)),
maybe it is the result of too much working from home recently - people create
problems where there are none.

What is even more funny is the fact that those changes are proposed by white
guys without any complains from the black folks.

~~~
amluto
There is a qualitative difference between your examples and “blacklist”. Dark
mode is about color. The color black is a color. Light mode is a color’s
brightness. A widely used white background is a color. I don’t think any
reasonable person objects to using terms about color to refer to colors. Black
objects are black, red objects are red, etc.

But “blacklist” is entirely different. “Blacklist” uses a color term to
describe the acceptability of something. It relates a _value judgment_ to a
color. I don’t know the history of the term, but I can easily see how it could
be at least somewhat offensive.

None of this is to say that the term “blacklist” is problematic or should be
discouraged, but your argument about it doesn’t hold water.

~~~
zzzcpan
Black is also not a color, but the light not being reflected or emitted or let
through. Hence the blacklist, it doesn't need to have judgement or
historically loaded meaning.

~~~
amluto
I don’t see your point. Blue is not a color. It’s just a failure of red or
green light to be let through.

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sub7
Friendship with Chrome over. Firefox is my friend now.

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apatheticonion
Can we please focus on web assembly and convincing Apple to catch up?

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rainboiboi
Can someone explain why Google is doing this? I cannot figure out why it can
benefit anyone (or to Google).

~~~
abofh
It benefits Google in a number of ways - amp pages being the biggest one. It
benefits nobody else as best I can tell, as it further obfuscates technology
from the user

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mehrdadn
If you care about this, my suggestion is to lend a hand to
[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium) and help them find a
way to make the transition between Chrome and Chromium more seamless.

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buboard
I don’t get the complaints. This frees up so much space for ads in the address
bar. Besides, people are finally certified stupid after decades of dumbing
down everything, and they can’t help themselves, and only google knows which
site is good or bad. They could have gone with a greyed out url path , but
that would be too confusing for users. They only exist to search, click on ads
and scroll endlessly.

