Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

androidpolice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 497 posts

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#231

Post by dmix »

dessant wrote: post #19

When the final version is implemented in a couple of years you will no longer see any URL, that way it won't be as evident that most sites on the web will be loaded from Google. Google is also attacking this issue from a different perspective with Signed Exchanges [1][2], to fake the URL and ensure their success in becoming the gatekeepers of the internet. If you refuse to become a content provider for Google's visio…

> to fake the URL and ensure their success in becoming the gatekeepers of the internet.

They should just buy Cloudflare

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#232

Post by curiousllama »

bitexploder wrote: post #49
khaledh wrote: post #12

IMO this is the real reason why they're pushing hard towards this: However, it's also worth considering that making the web address less important, as this feature does, benefits Google as a company. Google's goal with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and similar technologies is to keep users on Google-hosted content as much as possible, and Chrome for Android already modifies the address bar on AMP pages to hide that…

We are going back to AOL days. That didn’t work out so well for AOL in the long run. It’s kind of crazy to me you can’t do marketing now without at least discussing Google and Facebook these days. Edit: at least you knew you were the customer with AOL and paid them with clear terms for access.

AOL had a particular mismanagement problem that Google doesn't have.

AOL didn't lack depth: they literally had email (@aol.com), social media (AIM), video-calling (Vonage), cloud filesharing (Xdrive) and so much more.

Ultimately, they failed because (1) they were overvalued to begin with and (2) had a bad innovation model (top-down) that led them to (a) over-commit to online ads and (b) under-commit to broadband.

Google is sustainable & mature, and it has a distributed innovation model that will avoid the particular mistakes of AOL.

Google is reacting to the Walled Garden trend, not driving it.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#233

Post by emptyparadise »

bootlooped wrote: post #197
avodonosov wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

item?id=24156986 is readable and meaningful

Not to laypeople. Most people have no idea what query params are, or even what part of the url the top level domain is. You can explain what they are easily, but it still wouldn't be useful to laypeople. What can my mom do with "item?id=24156986"? Outside of developing something that interfaces with HN, I don't know what I would do with that info either.

A layperson wouldn't know what the "7394" in "7394 Foobar Road" means or why "Foobar Road" is a road called "Foobar" but that does not mean we should give Google the right to eliminate street addresses.

A URL is an address. All your mom needs to know is that if she goes to https://news.ycombimator.com/item?id=24156986, she will end up at something and she will be able to come back to it later, that's what's useful about it. And besides, there are URLs that are semantically useful, such as reddit's "u/username" or "r/subreddit" schemes.

Of course, the URL is being assaulted from two other fronts, with websites turning into single page apps and with social networks constantly making it difficult to share URLs.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#234

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

pgwhalen wrote: post #214
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed. With Firefox succumbing this week, this is pretty horrible. I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable. This compan…

> I’m not a Richard Stallman type, but I think it’s come to the point where if you have even the slightest pretense of being a “free web” person, using Chrome or a Chromium-based browser has become unconscionable. Thanks for phrasing it like this - I'm also not a Richard Stallman type but it's hard to disagree with this statement. Just downloaded Firefox and made the switch.

Great to hear.

Clearing my history/sessions in Chrome was an important factor in adoption for me as well. It helps that when you start typing in that search bar, it doesn’t feel familiar. Took a few weeks but did eventually stop looking to Chrome. Now I just use it for testing/Android debugging.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#235

Post by spideymans »

dpcx wrote: post #224
d99kris wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play the devil's advocate, Apple's Safari has been hiding full addresses for quite a while, without having any direct benefit as a company as far as I know.

It only does this on mobile, as far as I can tell; using desktop Safari as my primary browser, I'm not seeing this.

It does it on desktop too. You must’ve disabled in it settings

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#237

Post by hu3 »

teddyh wrote: post #180
hu3 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement Why in hell did they lay off MDN, Rust/Servo and Dev Tools teams?

Maybe because they wouldn’t have gotten the deal renewed otherwise?

How does firing some of their brilliant tech staff helps them renew a deal to keep Google as default search on Firefox?

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#238

Post by jhayward »

bitexploder wrote: post #174
axaxs wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, AOL was extremely successful and people loved it. I'm not ashamed to say I liked it, having everything in the same window. Google could only hope to achieve that fluidity. Messaging, Email, and web all in one workspace. AOL really only declined because of the rise in high speed internet, and their awful business model and practices.

The market also offered better services eventually and AOL simply couldn't keep up in every area. It slowly chipped away at their user base. Messaging was one of their killer features and apps like ICQ slowly ate them up while AOL tried to ride the same strategy of being everything to everyone into the future. I do agree it was a great experience for what it was, back in the day.

AOL bought ICQ in the very early days of messaging.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#239

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

pdmccormick wrote: post #209
greyfox wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With Firefox succumbing this week..." Firefox succumbed to what? Genuinely curious, i had not heard this.

There were a large number of layoffs at Mozilla, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 .

And strategic re-orientation as I understood it.

Re: Google resumes its attack on the URL bar, hides full addresses on Chrome 86

#240

Post by spideymans »

MockObject wrote: post #118
avasthe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It need not be malice. It maybe because the design people think people are too stupid to understand URLs. As other comment mentioned, Safari does it too. The trend seems to be abstracting away stuff like filesystem. Many people I know don't even organize stuff into folders on their phones. Everyone seems to dump everything in Download or something like that. The existence of separate applications for Music, Video and…

> It maybe because the design people think people are too stupid to understand URLs You may be right, but it's hard to see why this would be a concern in 2020. The number of users who have actually grown up with URLs in their childhood increases all the time.

Kids aren’t any more computer literate. Computers (ahem... phones) have just gotten way easier to use
Post reply on HN