
Google are removing URLs entirely from search results? - monort
https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/def9gg/google_are_removing_urls_entirely_from_the_search/
======
yyyk
This is a purely anti-user move.

No user gains anything by it, this actually helps phishing sites. Oh, and it
happens to help Google's AMP effort, which can now pretend to be the original
site even more effectively. Time to get everyone to use Duck Duck Go, and to
get rid of those Google CAPTCHAs which are an even bigger data harvesting
operation than search.

~~~
dessant
Do we have any recourse against this monopoly, other than voicing our concerns
repeatedly while they ignore us?

Can we launch a class action lawsuit against Google if they harm people by
limiting consumer choice, and force us to be tracked everywhere using
reCAPTCHA v3 and various other methods?

Keep in mind that not sending your data to Google is not a real option, there
are several government services, health care providers and utility companies
using reCAPTCHA, you personal data either gets harvested by Google, or you're
barred from accessing essential online services.

What can EU and US citizens do to initiate an investigation into Google's data
harvesting practices?

~~~
journalctl
> Do we have any recourse against this monopoly...?

Once upon a time, Congress used to write and pass laws to protect Americans
from egregious abuses of power like this. Of course, that time is long gone.

~~~
dehrmann
> egregious abuses of power like this

Do you honestly think removing URLs from search results is an "egregious abuse
of power?" This is the company that buys credit card transactions from Visa et
al. and associates them with your maps and and history for the benefit of
advertisers, and you're complaining about them removing a design element 95%
of people probably don't care about?

~~~
journalctl
I meant Google in general. It’s yet another tiny step in a terrible direction.
At this point I would love to legislate most of Google out of existence,
personally.

~~~
jumbopapa
I don't really buy using legislation. Alternatives exist and people don't seem
to care to use them. That's the market at work.

~~~
dessant
> I don't really buy using legislation. Alternatives exist and people don't
> seem to care to use them.

Google is engaged in using its market dominance in one segment to gain or
maintain dominance in others, while suppressing the competition. This is
illegal behavior for which Google has been fined several times over the past
few years.

Just consider that in past Android versions there was a hard-coded Google
search bar on the default home screen that you could not remove. Google has
been forced to ask users and offer a set of alternative search engines on
devices with recent Android versions. Same goes for Chrome and competing
browsers [1].

Right now Google Search detects the Firefox for Android user agent and serves
a second-tier search experience for Firefox users on Android. They have been
doing this for the past 6 years [2].

[1] [https://mashable.com/article/google-browser-search-engine-
ch...](https://mashable.com/article/google-browser-search-engine-choice-eu/)

[2]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444)

~~~
scarface74
How is Google stopping users from using another search engine?

------
jacquesm
It's still regular for me but if true this will probably be the last straw for
me. It's already absolutely impossible to send someone a link to a pdf you've
found through google, this would make it impossible to send any link. That
bloody wrapper is also a fine piece of shit. Search engines should link to
content, not appropriate that content, hide who supplies it or mess with the
links.

~~~
Nokinside
Have you tried these Firefox addons:

Google search link fix [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-
search...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-
fix/)

Google Search URL Fixup [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/google-search...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/google-search-url-fixup/)

~~~
solarkraft
It's not worth it. Just use DuckDuckGo or Searx.

~~~
bauc
I switched to DuckDuckGo a while ago, took a little while to get used but as
it's my default search engine I've got used to it. The funny thing for me is
now google's search results look strange to me as I've not kept up with all
their "tweaks/changes".

I think best thing is switch default search to a new engine to get used to it,
takes a little adjusting but worthwhile.

~~~
frankieta
It's the same for me. I tried DDG maybe a year ago..and couldn't stand it, I
found it too lousy. But now I'm trying again and this time it's slowly
sticking in. Idk if it for better or my tolerance against Google decreased.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It did much the same. I let my Google cookies expire on Firefox when they
broke Gmail on everything but Chrome. Google search results became even
crappier and I got fed up enough to permanently switch to DDG.

------
emrehan
Whether this claim is true nor not, Google is able to pull such a move due to
its monopoly. Most of us are against monopolies but don’t care about Google’s
central position on our precious Internet. We should act up though. One day,
it could be too late.

I’ve been using DDG for around a year now after numerous failed attempts in
the past. I, too, had been frustrated with some search results, but I don’t
miss Google anymore at all thanks to the bangs feature.

It is not obvious but DDG has a learning curve. You should re-learn the
practice of “Googling skill” that we had to have years ago. I could even guess
which queries DDG would fail to bring meaningful results before hitting enter
now. In these cases I add a “!s” bang for
[https://startpage.com](https://startpage.com) — a privacy conscious Google
proxy.

DDG bangs are especially useful on iOS, where you could type a query from any
page and only have 3 options: Search in the Web/App Store/Maps. If the search
engine is DDG though, you could search your query in any website you know its
bang with just a single step.

~~~
jacquesm
Why on earth is this comment downvoted?

~~~
reaperducer
A fair number of HN users work for said monopoly.

~~~
marcoseliziario
Not sure if is that the case. HN sometimes likes to downvote things randomly,
for no discernible reason at all.

------
asar
I think it's a little too early to come to a full conclusion here. Google is
constantly testing layout changes in SERPs and it seems like OP ended up in a
test. The thread is 4 weeks old and I haven't seen or read anything on these
changes anywhere but on this thread.

I still think Google's general direction is clear with more webmaster
incentives for structured data, amp and also Google just straight up answering
questions (nutrition, sports etc.). But this example doesn't prove that Google
is removing URLs from SERPs, it is one version of many that are tested
constantly to improve CTR and other metrics.

~~~
spinningslate
It's less the specifics and more the trend. Google's direction is, as stated
elsewhere, to be seen as the _source_ of information - not a route to it. As
you note, they're incentivising structured content - which means they can
appropriate it and present directly rather than providing a link to the
originator.

No doubt some will find it helpful (as with AMP). Some will find it
unacceptable appropriation. I'm most definitely in the latter camp. I don't
use Google search anymore, having transitioned to DDG 2+ years ago. I rarely
find situations where reverting to Google is necessary, and when I do, a `g!`
in DDG is as close as I get.

I realise I may be in a minority, but as far as I'm concerned both Google and
Facebook have jumped the shark. They're become corporate behemoths, a malaise
that seems to come to all companies of a certain age and scale. They've lost
focus on providing useful, innovative services for real people. Instead,
they're all about "shareholder value". Both are ripe for disruption.

~~~
cartoonworld
I have recently noticed that to my eyes, Google search looks like physical
junkmail marketing "Magazines".

Google funnels me to products, services, and affilate marketing blogs,
advertisements and their own paid ad placement. To Google, the internet is
shopping, and maybe a least-common-denominator social network or two. Garbage.

Google feels like going to the Mall anymore. Super sad, but as you have
noticed the silver lining is the fabulous service of duck.com.

If I were paying for google search with a credit card, I would cancel, and
then call to stop payment. Too bad they never asked for my money.

------
davidy123
First of all, I hope this is just an tiny experiment or better a hoax, and
won't be widely adopted. Google deserves constant critique, but they also
deserve credit as a company that often promotes the open way first (for
example, schema.org as a way anyone can describe their information, which can
be ready by anyone).

But if it's not an experiment, I'd start putting my energy into moving away
from Google. In the AltaVista era, just before Google, there was a company
called Real Names, which wanted to bypass intentional DNS and use searches as
direct keywords to domains. Since many people use Google to go to everyday
sites, just taking the top result each time, this is in effect what Google
would be doing with this change, since one would have to actually go to the
site to verify it. Which would be great for ad impressions, but terrible for
the consumer experience, IMO way too random for Google to seriously consider
it. The next step would be to remove URLs from browsers. But that would be
quite a change in direction from good intentions.

~~~
judge2020
I think it's more "test with users but keep programmers/power users happy".
Old accounts (or maybe accounts they deem to be 'power users'?) still see the
green http/s links, and my search for "mortgages" doesn't show the favicons
like the reddit suggests.

[https://i.judge.sh/rare/Spoon/chrome_EVGYE1pF7H.png](https://i.judge.sh/rare/Spoon/chrome_EVGYE1pF7H.png)

This happened with the little icons next to the "all/news/images" tabs at the
top a few months ago, I didn't see them in my G search but incognito showed
them.

~~~
anchpop
I tried the same search in both and got the same results (links displayed in
both). Maybe you just happened to get into a different A/B bucket when you
opened incognito

------
Santosh83
URLs are one of the basic building blocks of the WWW. Again Google is abusing
it's practical monopoly as the gateway to the WWW to consolidate the lock-in.
Again, as always, the tech aware crowd will make a huge noise, perhaps delay
the inevitable, but sooner or later this WILL be implemented all across Google
(right now seems specific to Google UK), and again, as always, the billions of
ordinary Internet users are going to be slightly surprised, but shrug and get
used to the change and move on. And that will help consolidate the change and
the tech aware crowd will either grudgingly follow or just stay holed up
elsewhere and in either case Google doesn't care.

This is just another manifestation of the corporate/state control and
Balkanisation of the Internet that has slowly been taking place. The Internet
will pretty soon be entirely subsumed into various the structure of various
countries and corporations and there'll be no such thing as the "free web", at
least for most users not willing to go through several hoops.

------
nullc
The fact that google rewrites the displayed URLs as you click on them to
intercept the traffic (and that firefox continues to allow them to do it:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229050](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229050))
is bad enough.

Google's current behavior makes it so you can't copy URLs from search results
so your only option is to copy the displayed URL (if it's short enough) ... so
of course, they're going to remove the displayed URL.

Copying the search results URLs is something that I need to do almost every
day to copy scientific paper urls to people in chat ... usually I can't click
the url to get it, because clicking it just launches a PDF viewer.

This single obnoxious bit of user spying behavior that Mozilla continues to
facilitate has probably already wasted a full working week of my life.

On the plus (?) side, now that google is removing the one remaining work
around I'll likely get stuck using a non-google search regardless of the worse
results.

~~~
firexcy
Yes, and this behavior is also annoying because it prevents you from copying
the real URL directly from the result page. Instead you’re getting a rewrited
URL that is neither readable or shareable.

------
mantap
This is so dangerous, imagine how it will be abused for phishing. Now even an
expert user can't tell the difference.

------
freediver
From the standpoint of Google this is passing the 'grandma test'. They are
catering to billions of users, of whom only tiny minority care about the full
URL displayed; for most it's unnecessary information. The results look cleaner
this way. It also slightly compresses the results so they can probably fit one
more above the fold.

The Google way is to reduce complexity for the user as much as possible. This
may be in contrast to what most HN users expect from a search engine
(transparency and control). Google has been ignoring this segment as most use
adblocker anyway so the cost/benefit appears bad, for now.

~~~
anchpop
It also shows the favicons, which help people recognize what site they're
looking at if they're familiar with them much more quickly than a url can.

------
foxes
Time to remind everyone about searx [0]. It can use google results and you can
run your own instance.

[0] [https://searx.me/](https://searx.me/)

[1] [https://github.com/asciimoo/searx](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx)

~~~
DavideNL
I get this error when i try to search in
[https://searx.me/](https://searx.me/) :

    
    
        Error! Engines cannot retrieve results. 
        google (unexpected crash: CAPTCHA required)
        Please, try again later or find another searx instance.
    

EDIT:
[https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/issues/729](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/issues/729)

~~~
foxes
Yep that seems to happen sometimes. Here is a list of other public instances.

[https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-
instances](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances)

------
throwaway122378
They also do open most links in their own google.com wrapper. Time to break
them up

~~~
Sharlin
Which is extremely annoying when it’s a pdf or other document that’s set to
immediately download; it’s rather tricky to get the actual URL if you want to
share it as it won’t ever show up in the address bar.

~~~
zeitg3ist
You can usually right-click the file in the downloads panel of the browser and
copy its url.

~~~
Sharlin
Thanks, somehow hadn't discovered that!

------
zxcvbn4038
I’m not sure what Google is thinking here, this is an easy win for phishing
sites - not just a lifeline but they are going to flourish. It’s also a huge
win for all the sites that are just mirrors of other sites, and low quality
sites like Pinterest that flood google with links that only work in their app
(which I thought was against Google’s TOS but they have condoned Pinterest for
years). the only possible upside I see is that it could deal a bow to domain
name speculation - what good is a domain if nobody sees it or has to type it?
It’s just an dumb indirection mechanism at that point. Though if domains stop
being meaningful to humans then that leads right back to phishing and scams.
Going to be bad if this isn’t a means to an end we’re not aware of yet.

~~~
danShumway
I don't think it's a secret. Google's been pretty open for a while about the
fact that they want to get rid of URLs entirely on the web.[0]

De-emphasizing the URL in search is a necessary step on the path to that end.
The less of a role the URL plays in ordinary people's lives, the less that
people will understand it, and the more evidence Google will see that it can
be de-emphasized in other places, and eventually removed or replaced entirely.

And to a certain extent, I get it. I myself would like to move away from URLs
to a DAT-adjacent system. I'm not fond of DNS as it works today. I just think
Google's approach to all of this is naive and user-hostile. I think their
solution will be worse than the problem.

Proponents of DAT systems are advocating that URLs as we use them today aren't
great for a lot of stuff, including protecting against phishing, and we should
be more up-front about that and stop aiming for readability in domain names --
in short, don't promise something that we can't guarantee. On the other hand,
Google is advocating that there should be centralized authorities that tell
you Walmart is Walmart and everything should be highly tied to trademarks and
brands. Their position is, "phishing won't be a problem because we'll just get
good at blocking phishers." When you search on Google for Walmart, it'll be
the first result and you'll click on it and trust Google.

It's a very centralized, brand-first, Capitalist approach to the web, where
reliability is tied to being big enough that you can tell potential customers
or users to just Google your name.

Sometimes Google does bad things and we theorize that maybe they're trying to
change the web; but in this case we don't have to theorize. They're just
openly trying to change the web. Google doesn't like URLs.

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-
url/](https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/)

------
bobsoap
Remember AOL, anyone? And so, we've come full circle.

~~~
bsdubernerd
In my tech circle, almost everyone has switched to another search engine (ddg
mostly, startpage, bing), which is quite telling. I noticed as I spot them in
a search result page while together, not because they told me. This was an eye
opener.

I initially _had_ to because the search itself became unreliable for me
(finding technical terms is now a frustration in quoting and checking for
"missing from the page: term"), but other search engines (like ddg) are not
better in this area. Issues with AMP links though made me permanently switch
the default search engine entirely.

I now use google as a backup, reluctantly and in combination with others,
exactly how I was using altavista and yahoo eons ago.

I would have never imagined this would happen.

But if I ask _any_ other non-tech person, google is still the only search
engine they know (or even don't know) about.

~~~
filesystem
I have tried to switch to DDG as my primary a few times now. It works great
for basic searches, but I still go to google when I’m troubleshooting
something and need answers fast. DDG just isn’t there yet in terms of time-to-
answer.

~~~
bsdubernerd
I'm not 100% happy with DDG either, it just needs to be less frustrating than
google on the average, which lowers the bar to competition a lot.

------
johnchristopher
A year or two ago I noticed that Youtube links were messed up in the search
result so maybe the writing has been on the wall for a real long time.

For instance, if you google
[https://www.google.com/search?q=jimmy+eat+world+555](https://www.google.com/search?q=jimmy+eat+world+555)
you get a thumbnail with a Youtube URL linking to the actual video but as soon
as you right or left click the link it's changed to a google.com link with a
lot of parameters. Makes it super frustrating if you want to share a link to
the youtube video from the SERP.

~~~
djmips
I tested that and when I right clicked the link was just the raw YouTube link.
Also tried in incognito and same result. Interesting.

~~~
johnchristopher
Here's a video of what it looks like on my end
[https://streamable.com/rdppj](https://streamable.com/rdppj) (ff, incognito,
can't remember if I ever checked it out in Chrome). The status bar shows the
updated link as I right or left click on it. I then copy paste the new URL to
show it leads to the Youtube link.

Well:

<a href="[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU-
TZiVVaTE"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU-TZiVVaTE") onmousedown="return
rwt(this,'','','','1','AOvVaw3lnl6zJ37POHhefQnIow95','','2ahUKEwiZ0PDWzMvlAhVDaFAKHQGODhYQyCkwAHoECAkQBQ','','',event)">

------
jjohansson
Google just last week announced a drop in profit, so expect more of these
types of “optimizations” over the coming months.

Over the past 6 months they’ve already increased the font size of SERPs, made
their ads look even more similar to organic results, and started showing
multiple results from the same site in the top 5 results for highly
competitive terms. All of these “optimizations” are designed to encourage more
ad revenue.

Plus their Google Ads account managers have become hyper aggressive in pushing
their keyword and bidding AI, which according to our tests increase costs per
conversions.

~~~
MayeulC
But isn't Google going to realize that there isn't such a thing as infinite
growth?

I get that they got used to tremendous growth in the early days. But it has to
stop at some point. Same is true for the economy (we "fix" that with
inflation). And they're probably going to be split up before they reach the
theoritical maximum.

Couldn't they just be nice neighbors and not squeeze the last drop of milk out
of us.

I'd wager that the drop in productivity caused by Google, Facebook and the
advertisement-based business model that they encourage dwarfs their revenue by
several orders of magnitude.

~~~
izacus
> But isn't Google going to realize that there isn't such a thing as infinite
> growth?

Google (and other corps) will realize that when stock market will stop
demanding infinite growh and not a cent sooner. Leaderships don't get paid in
user happiness, they get rewarded by stock value. And stock market demands
infinite unbounded growth for all eternity.

------
alperakgun
Gooogle quarterly earnings follow each other:

\- Ads look like valid search results

\- Ads are on top, right, bottom in desktop, on maps too

\- URLs disappear

\- The address bar shortens the history, and search is the only way out

\- Less advanced search options

Rife for disruption.

------
userbinator
I've noticed that if you change your user-agent to something really old and
turn off JS, you can still get more "normal" looking results, complete with
the option to view the cached page right there, but I'm not sure how long that
will last...

Also don't forget that not too long ago, Google decided to start hiding pieces
of URLs and convincing the web standards groups to make that a standard:

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-
chrome-h...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-hides-
www-and-https-in-the-address-bar-again/)

(In that article there's a very visible email address of a product manager at
Google responsible for this, be sure to let her know your thoughts...)

I think that's just more proof that "web standards" aren't necessarily good
for the user, especially if they're controlled by anti-user corporations. It's
not unlike what's happening with open-source too: "we can do all these
horrible things to oppress you, but it's open-source so you can see exactly
what we do to you."

~~~
skybrian
That's a little different. You often don't see the full URL on a phone because
the text box isn't big enough, so it gets cut off. When the browser doesn't
have space to show the whole thing, displaying the most security-relevant part
(the domain name) makes more sense than blindly truncating the end off it,
even though doing it the dumb way is how we're used to text fields working.

Designing for small screens is tricky. You can still get the whole URL easily.

You could send email but it's just going to come off as badly informed, unless
you show that you understand what they're trying to do and still disagree.

~~~
userbinator
The article talks about the desktop version specifically. A phone is a little
different, I agree.

------
bhartzer
One of the issues that many don’t realize is that if google removes the domain
it opens it up for more phishing attempts.

If users don’t see the domain then they may see a similar site and click on
it. But it’s not the official site.

------
prennert
I have tweeted about this a couple of weeks ago. No answer from Google, but
then again I don't have much of a following. I hope this attention turns their
decision around.

I noticed this particularly badly when I tried to Google a product. I was
after reviews but without the links it is impossible to tell whether a result
leads to a review, a shop, a forum or whatever. It was surprising to me how
much information is encoded in a URL. I analyzed it subconsciously all the
time. It only became obvious once it was missing.

------
Animats
Is this only being done for some users, or what? Do you have to have a Google
account and be logged in? Not seeing this.

(I have an old Firefox and Chrome add-on, "Ad Limiter", which puts ratings on
links based on finding the business behind the site and looking it up. As a
side effect, if you mouse over its colored checkmarks, you get a "dog tag"
with info about the site, including the domain. So that's an available
workaround, if needed.)

~~~
Rebelgecko
It's been happening to me for a few months. It's what prompted me to finally
move over to DDG

------
FpUser
That was then:
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7503641/Sergey...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7503641/Sergey-
Brin-My-upbringing-in-USSR-helped-shape-Googles-views-on-China.html)

And this is now. Do no evil my a$$ Mr. Sergey Brin. Hypocrite is your middle
name. Yeah, yeah I know, it is all big bad shareholders

------
14
Can I ask HN for help. Almost have my dad switched off chrome but he keeps
heading back to use the built in voice search. Last I checked it wasn't built
into Firefox. Is there a privacy minded voice search assistance he can use. We
don't even mind paying for a program. Just insure what to use that will also
be better then google in terms of privacy. Thanks

------
Jagat
It's not a haox folks. It just so happens that my Chrome user is not in the
A/B test, but my firefox user is. Here are the two versions I see on two
different browsers. Chrome shows URLs while firefox doesn't
[https://imgur.com/a/TX49AZu](https://imgur.com/a/TX49AZu)

------
thinkingemote
I'm also seeing no URLs. Here is the same Google search in Firefox and
Chromium as a logged in user. With firefox it shows the URLs and with Chromium
it doesn't :
[https://i.imgur.com/Ko8niRF.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ko8niRF.png)

------
mirimir
I just checked Google search with Chrome and Firefox in Debian, and both still
show URLs for actual search results. But not for ads.

So I wonder if Google plans to drop URLs from actual search results. And if
they do, whether using Startpage, or DDG with the Google option, would still
show them.

~~~
amoron
The test groups are separated on account level. I get old Google whenever I
log out.

~~~
mirimir
Thanks.

I have no Google accounts.

That seems odd. You'd think that having an account would provide _better_
service.

------
Angostura
Just waiting for iOS to include a ‘bypass AMP’ setting.

~~~
nyuszika7h
You can use 3D Touch / Haptic Touch for that in Safari.

------
einpoklum
Well, this isn't happening when I use Google, but:

1\. I use ad-blocking (e.g. uBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger), so all those
ads go away. Maybe the actual search results are simply under a pile of
commercial junk?

2\. I try to use DuckDuckGo rather than Google.

------
buboard
Between amp results, and google masquerading as other domains, the url field
was dishonest anyway. Welcome to google s walled garden. Please verify your
site so we know who we are banning.

Google. It’s got electrolytes (tm)

------
syphilis2
Sometimes when using Google News it looks like the news site has loaded, but
the browser still displays the Google URL. Does anyone know what is going on?
It's obnoxious when I want to send the link to someone but I only have access
to the Google URL.

Example URL:
[https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEMVJWO7QqMIc4YUoEkX9LZM...](https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEMVJWO7QqMIc4YUoEkX9LZMqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzww9oEY?hl=en-
US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen)

------
antpls
What I find more worrying are all the anecdotes of people trying to blacklist
Google and then not being able to browse the Web because of Captcha, login,
and other weird tracking.

------
fraaaam
I switched to Ecosia a while ago and most of my searches return relatively
solid results. For the ones that don't, you can type a #g at the end of your
search term to continue to use google. They claim to not maintain search
history profiles, they still have URLs, and they implement more search
features regularly from what Ive seen. Not as private as DDG, but its
definitely a step in the right direction. Oh and they plant a tree for every
40 searches or so.

~~~
beardog
Ecosia is nice, but I find their privacy claims to be a little misleading.
They forward searches to Bing alongside your IP address and are not in control
of what Bing stores. DDG uses Bing as well, but does not send your IP there.

"For example, when you do a search on Ecosia we forward the following
information to our partner, Bing: IP address, user agent string, search term,
and some settings like your country and language setting."

Although it does claim that bing anonymizes the data after 4 days.

------
RenRav
This is how the mobile version of Google behaves, is it not?

~~~
buboard
I see an icon and address above the title on mobile

~~~
gniv
Are you sure? Sometimes the title of a page is the url (or they use the url
when the title is missing?). I see titles mostly.

~~~
buboard
This is the style of results i m seeing in mobile:
[https://i.imgur.com/eDZjQlW.png](https://i.imgur.com/eDZjQlW.png)

I guess it s different for everyone

~~~
RenRav
I can't remember the last time mobile searches displayed the URL, it has
looked like this for me:
[https://i.imgur.com/mPQk9wf.png](https://i.imgur.com/mPQk9wf.png)

------
quantumwoke
When I noticed this happen to my account, I thought 'this is it'. We survived
(sort of) the adpocalypse - time for the urlpocalypse?

------
pharrington
Agreeing with this redditor—this is almost certainly an automated A/B test -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/def9gg/google_are_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/def9gg/google_are_removing_urls_entirely_from_the_search/f2z65py/)

------
ddingus
Query: Good search tools in addition to ddg.gg

I really hate no URL results. I search and obtain URLs all the time. Google is
ruined for me.

~~~
zepearl
Today I used a couple of times "Qwant" (no clue what it means and no clue why
"lite"): [https://lite.qwant.com](https://lite.qwant.com)

They were always technical searches. In all cases the first result was
perfect, but the highlighting of the searched keywords in the result never
worked too well so far)

~~~
ddingus
Thanks

------
hartator
At SerpApi.com, we've noticed this new format for a while. And the bad news is
the trend seems to accelerate. :/

------
corford
Echoing everyone else: this is the shove I needed to finally swap to DDG full
time.

Bonus I just discovered: by setting DDG as my search provider in Firefox, I
can now go directly to wikipedia articles or google images from FF's search
toolbar - just have to prepend the appropriate bang... quite handy!

------
seganddr
I am upset every time I see that interface. It makes it so much more difficult
to identify fake/spam websites.

------
drpixie
Don't like it but there is an up side - the main links now seem to point
directly to the destination, instead of google's tracking servers.

So you can see the real address in your browser's hint, at least until lets-
be-evil point the link to their trackers.

~~~
jrahmy
The links have _ostensibly_ pointed to the destination for quite some time, at
least for me. The current techniques they use for tracking clicks do not
require otherwise. They just use pings[1] where supported, and a JS mouse-down
event to switch the destination when clicking elsewhere.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#ping)

------
RodgerTheGreat
Another small change that diminishes the utility of the site, and makes it
harder for me to sift through the junk content that increasingly makes it to
the top of the pile. I think this has convinced me to start using Duck Duck Go
as my search provider.

------
austhrow743
Left gmail just over a year ago which was the biggest anchor holding me to
Google. Appears this was what was needed to get me over to duckduckgo on
search. Results have been fine for everything I've searched in the last hour.

~~~
bharam
What was your process for leaving Google? I'm on Android, have a GMail account
and so on. If you want to leave where do you start?

~~~
MayeulC
Not the parent, and you might consider me biased/extremist, but it might give
you ideas: I've been moving to a self-hosted (yunohost for now) solution on a
re-purposed computer. Unfortunately, this isn't for everyone. This covers
mail, cloud (with nextcloud: calendar, contacts, pictures), and many others.

On Android, I mostly use F-droid, as I find apps there are of better quality
anyways. The only other apps left on my phone are for banking and
transportation, plus maybe a few select services.

I will likely move over to a pinephone when they are available. I can't wait
to have a serviceable phone, both hardware and software.

The self-hosted way maybe isn't for everyone, but if every person that does it
offers access to family and friends, it wouldn't take that many hosts... and
there are commercial/nonprofit orgs that provide some hosting options.

I do not self-host a search engine, though (searx didn't work well, and isn't
really a search engine). It took me a few weeks to get used to ddg, but I find
it very hard to use Google nowadays, as I got used to bangs, instant answers,
the way to enter search terms, etc. I actually use my old (ca. 2010) Google-
fu, which works well, but not on Google anymore.

------
z3t4
Probably ads. On some search words the entire first page will be filled with
ads.

------
amursft
I'm very curious what (if any) user testing resulted in this change, because I
really don't like the sound of it. Domain is a lot of how I try to judge the
quality of a result.

------
retpirato
is there a greasemonkey/tampermonkey script to fix this?

------
kd3
Anyone know of a good replacement for Google recaptcha?

~~~
ben509
This thread digs into the notion that you probably don't need a solution as
comprehensive as reCaptcha:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158386)

And the article suggests some alternatives towards the end.

~~~
kd3
Thanks!

------
amiga-workbench
Are they going to try and pull a bait and switch on the web with AMP and hope
that the normies are too dumb to notice?

------
daolf
The title seems a bit misleading, Google do experiments like this all the
time.

Of course, should this change be permanent, we would have to be worried, but
stating that it is already the case is not true.

PS: here is one example:
[https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/03/23/google-zero-
se...](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/03/23/google-zero-search-
results)

~~~
jacquesm
Even as an experiment it is terribly misguided and that something like this
would make it into the production environment _as an experiment_ is a clear
sign that they are actually considering rolling something like this out to the
GP.

~~~
daolf
I totally agree, I just think that "Google is currently experimenting removing
URLs entirely from the search" would have been a more honest title.

~~~
jacquesm
It's probably that for that user that's what it looks like and then you
combine that with HN's original title policy. It's not 100% perfect but it
works most of the time.

------
qwerty456127
Phishers gonna love this. Now you see a search result and can't even know what
site that actually is.

------
beardog
I am seeing this on Google Chrome on my phone, but not on firefox on my
desktop (both incognito and not)

------
onetimemanytime
if they keep the url, users might remember it and go there directly next time,
skipping Google.

------
ddingus
Well, that $17k to give up Google question just got devalued.

Nobody needs URLs removed, except Google.

------
war1025
I've used Yahoo for search since basically forever. My understanding is its
backed by Bing these days. It's really not bad. Don't understand why everyone
sticks to google other than marketing and momentum.

~~~
rapnie
You'll probably hand over your search data to Verizon then. Why not use e.g.
DDG (or Searx as mentioned elsewhere in this thread):

> DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources, including
> Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own Web crawler (the
> DuckDuckBot) and others.

> DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and
> as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information, and
> uses cookies only when required.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo)

~~~
war1025
Not something I'm particularly concerned about to be honest.

My main point is that there are several completely adequate replacements for
google, DuckDuckGo being one of them.

------
docuru
I remember reading a thread about this move a while ago

------
meh206
It's a move that even sheeple won't like

------
tambourine_man
This maybe the straw that’ll break the camel’s back.

I’m each day more pissed off with AMP. It’s taken over the web to such degree
that it became essentially a first barrier to whatever content I’m accessing.

The experience is so terrible that I refuse to use it, so there goes another
tap reload to access the real thing.

And sometimes the site refuses me. For whatever reason, I get stuck on a
poorly implemented Google paywall even though I’m a paying customer of the
site.

And now this. Wrapping the original URL on search results wasn’t enough it
seems.

Add that to Gmail’s general suckiness and I can see them bleeding the advanced
users that got them where they are pretty fast.

------
knorker
Good thing Bing is no longer shit.

------
modzu
reminds me of when google made their ads match the formatting of the actual
search results.

fu google.

------
ChrisCinelli
Maybe an A/B test?

~~~
treebornfrog
I don't see how this is relevant.

Even if it was an ab test, we know that Google is looking to remove url
structures from search results.

~~~
jefftk
It doesn't tell you that. For example, it could be an experiment to learn how
much weight users put on the URL in choosing between results.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, but I don't work in Search and don't know
anything specific here)

~~~
jacquesm
It could be. But I would put my money on this being what it actually looks
like: a way to test the waters on what kind of effect dropping visible URLs in
results would have.

And if you work at Google, wouldn't you want to know? Maybe ask the search
team and report back what you find, I'm really curious.

~~~
jefftk
While I could look things up internally, if I did I couldn't post back here
about it, sorry!

------
tomohawk
So, no longer a search service, but a proxy service with built in search?

~~~
jacquesm
On top of a CAN. "Content Appropriation Network", something a bit like a CDN
only you get to lose your audience.

------
exikyut
I observed this with amused, scornful yet despondent cynicism when it rolled
out for me a couple of months ago. (I'm in AU.)

It doesn't work. At all. (TL;DR click the links at the bottom, or keep reading
and be prepared to reattach your jaw.)

In an age of technical illiteracy from both young people and old, Google has
made phishing campaigns a million times easier.

I have no contacts inside Google, but I would (still) put decent money on the
chances being 1000% that a very large security stink was raised about this
internally... to apparently no avail. So I'm fascinated to see where this
goes, security debacle, bathwater and all.

YouTube universally shows "[https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com)
› watch".

This site consists entirely of the One True Path™
"[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) › item".

Google Books, similarly, stocks hundreds of millions of one particular title,
"[https://books.google.com](https://books.google.com) › books".

GitHub often shows up as "[https://github.com](https://github.com) › ..." or
"[https://github.com](https://github.com) › projectname" (yes, I'm not
kidding, the repo author is elided from the URL). Looking forward to seeing
how spammers take advantage of this.

Best of all was the one time I clicked something that _downloaded a file_ (it
had Content-Disposition: attachment set). Oh, because it was an .mbox file;
that makes sense... except the filename and extension were completely elided
from the URL, so the random download was quite the violation of the principle
of least surprise.

Shortly after the file download event, I decided to get in touch with Google
to politely sort of go "what gives" in case anything interesting or insightful
came of the resulting conversation. The Product Forums is basically "cat
/dev/pitchforks > /dev/null" so I didn't want to get stampeded to death in
there, and the various feedback options on the site feel like a surreal
merging of /dev/urandom and /dev/zero so I was distinctly uncertain about
pursuing those options either. So I decided to try
[https://issuetracker.google.com/](https://issuetracker.google.com/).

Well, I can report that this little-known corner of Google, mostly used to
track Android issues, is very topically focused and simply doesn't have the
forwarding infrastructure (ahem, or policy) to handle anything else. At least
the human at the other end was nice about it.

I took a screenshot of the thread I created (which only I can view), and put
it up at [https://imgur.com/a/K443Tkp](https://imgur.com/a/K443Tkp).

While writing this post, I also decided to properly memorialize this insanity
and added screenshots of all the examples in the bugreport to the above album.
(Besides the small screenshot of LWN, all were taken today.)

Since PNGs aren't very clipboard-friendly, here's a copy-paste (expires:
never) of my submission:
[https://pastebin.com/ksBEEG91](https://pastebin.com/ksBEEG91)

NB. Don't thrash against the New Way. It ensures your job security as a
security consultant. And earmarks you as Elite, And To Be Watched Out For, or
something. I don't know.

(Oh, and I took all the screenshots using super-sized Xvnc. Chrome's devtools'
full-page screenshot function doesn't work at all with the issue tracker UI.)

(And I don't live anywhere near Hurstville. May GeoIP forever remain hand-
wavily inaccurate!)

------
ibrimstone
So, $AAPL AND RE-Branded $YHOO IS USING $IBM’s WATSON FOR M2M2BM2M and you’re
letting them drink down on your suction-economies data every minute of the day
if you run any app I.WEATHER.

------
SquareWheel
Google run hundreds of A/B tests. The chances of this ever being rolled more
widely out are slim to none.

Terribly misleading headline.

~~~
yyyk
This was sent to production. Obviously someone thinks about deploying this
change. This is precisely the time for pushback - before Google does this - to
tell Google their A/B result is a very big fail.

Also, to get some people to try alternatives, because even if this isn't
deployed, Google's anti-user direction seems clear enough.

~~~
SquareWheel
>Obviously someone thinks about deploying this change.

They could be testing this for any number of reasons. Maybe they're trying to
learn something specific rather than change how the product works long-term.

The linked post is from a month ago and there's been no evidence of this test
being scaled up.

Besides, it's still a misleading title.

~~~
yyyk
"They could be testing this for any number of reasons."

Are they testing how to get maximum outrage from HN!? I kid.

I think the suspicious attitude is justified given Google's recent history;
and it's better to make our opinion clear before Google does something stupid.

As for "a month ago", some other people in the thread also see this, so I
guess Google is still "testing" it.

------
CriticalCathed
How are computer scientists and software engineers at Google okay with this?
This type of change, on top of the very sketchy AMP stuff, seriously makes me
question the ethics of those who work at Google.

This seems like an obvious "no, that's a bad idea" to anyone who isn't
malicious.

