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

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

#11

Post by dwheeler »

mkl wrote: post #3
AnonHP wrote: post #2

I get emails from some banks with instructions to spot phishing. One of those is to look at the full URL in emails or on websites to know if it’s authentic or not. For better or worse, the URL scheme is what we have to identify websites and pages. Hiding that on larger screens doesn’t make much sense. It also hinders learning for the next generation.

Actually, that's their argument for doing it. Most users don't understand the different bits of a URL, to know whether it's from the site they think it's from. See (huge) previous discussion from two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516088 Personally, for my own purposes, I think hiding any bit of the URL is incredibly inconvenient. Already hiding the www. is seriously annoying. I will switch this n…

It is not just inconvenient, hiding or modifying URLs is a lie and is a security problem. Hiding part of the URL means that you don't really see what's going on, and that is the first step towards a security problem, not away from it.

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

#12

Post by khaledh »

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 the pages are hosted by Google.

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

#14

Post by jpt1 »

mkl wrote: post #3
AnonHP wrote: post #2

I get emails from some banks with instructions to spot phishing. One of those is to look at the full URL in emails or on websites to know if it’s authentic or not. For better or worse, the URL scheme is what we have to identify websites and pages. Hiding that on larger screens doesn’t make much sense. It also hinders learning for the next generation.

Actually, that's their argument for doing it. Most users don't understand the different bits of a URL, to know whether it's from the site they think it's from. See (huge) previous discussion from two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516088 Personally, for my own purposes, I think hiding any bit of the URL is incredibly inconvenient. Already hiding the www. is seriously annoying. I will switch this n…

I didn't know there is an option to change it back, thanks for pointing that out. I've found it really frustrating when trying to copy different parts of the URL.

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

#15

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

> “Showing the full URL may detract from the parts of the URL that are more important to making a security decision on a webpage," Chromium software engineer Livvie Lin said in a design document earlier this year.

I’m a software engineer, too, but I would never make such an important UX decision because I know that is not my area of expertise.

I hope they’ve gotten significant user feedback on this before rolling it out.

Personally, I hate it.

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

#16

Post by criley2 »

bambax wrote: post #13

For now I'm quite happy to have finally switched to Firefox a few months ago. If Firefox disappeared though, as it seems it might, that would be horribly frustrating.

Firefox/Mozilla is largely funded with the search deal which is usually paid by Google.

Google has a vested interest in Firefox staying alive for competitive/monopoly reasons, especially now that IE is official a Chrome skin.

e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...

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

#17

Post by dayjobpork »

AnonHP wrote: post #2

I get emails from some banks with instructions to spot phishing. One of those is to look at the full URL in emails or on websites to know if it’s authentic or not. For better or worse, the URL scheme is what we have to identify websites and pages. Hiding that on larger screens doesn’t make much sense. It also hinders learning for the next generation.

Countdown until scammers figure out a way to screw up the parsing code and get Chrome to show the incorrect fake url

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

#19

Post by dessant »

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 vision of the web, then they currently won't feature you at the top of search results in the Top Stories carousel, and perhaps demote you entirely from the first page in the future, depending on how their hijacking strategy works out.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678693

[2] https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2019/06/mozilla.p...

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

#20

Post by mkl »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #7
mkl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's their argument for doing it. Most users don't understand the different bits of a URL, to know whether it's from the site they think it's from. See (huge) previous discussion from two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516088 Personally, for my own purposes, I think hiding any bit of the URL is incredibly inconvenient. Already hiding the www. is seriously annoying. I will switch this n…

> Actually, that's their argument for doing it. If AMP didn't exist I might be slightly more inclined to believe them.

They have a plan for that, too, a proposed standard (SXG: Signed HTTP Exchanges, currently only supported in Chrome and derivatives) that lets them hide the fact that AMP is being used: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/11/signed-exc... and more background: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/googles-amp-canonical-...
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