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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

#101

Post by magicalist »

inopinatus wrote: post #73
bitexploder wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The comparison to AOL was my first thought also. Basically, Google have lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.

> The comparison to AOL was my first thought also

It doesn't really make sense, though. The AOL thing was always things like "visit AOL keyword lord of the rings" at the end of trailers, and that would take you to the marketing site.

If Chrome wanted to do that, in the example gif the keyword wouldn't be just "en.wikipedia.org" for the URL article, it would be something like "wikipedia URL" that would bring you back to the page you're on through a google search.

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

#102

Post by axaxs »

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.

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.

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

#103

Post by avasthe »

achn wrote: post #46
daveed wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, depends who you mean by people? I'm pretty happy to go to amp sites. The thing I care about is the content.

Then you've not used many AMP sites - many do not function properly and try to 'stream' the content as you scroll leading to a garbage experience and missing content.

They are faster than average webshit. That matters to user, even if the bootcamp webshit and his accountant manager doesn't think so.

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

#104

Post by avasthe »

fareesh wrote: post #90
avasthe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the webshits didn't bloat the web like this, AMP wouldn't have happened. "But all hipsters I know have latest macbook pro" has been the standard answer from all of them.

Google rewards developers who use AMP with better search positioning than even a plain HTML page

Yeah. But AMP was an initiative for speeding up the web.

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

#105

Post by raybb »

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.

Do you or anyone else have a video or screenshots of what you're talking about? Or is there a specific name of the product where AOL was doing this?

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

#106

Post by chillfox »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #91
donor20 wrote: post #68

Wow - top posts are conspiracy theories. "The only reason to do this..." "This is a security issue..." Google has millions / billions of users. From a security standpoint the focus should be entirely on the root domain, that is the only really meaningful root of trust. If you are talking about a security issue - the KEY security issue is ANY lack of clarity around root domain. "Showing the full URL may detract from t…

> their focus on things like ... security ... helped them become absolutely dominant I don't think Chrome's security features had anything to do with its ascension. Chrome took off because it was fast and had a good UI (iirc it had the ability to drag a tab from one window to another, a while before other browsers did). The average user knows nothing of the security features of their browser.

Also you couldn’t use google search in a different browser without constantly getting harassed to install chrome

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

#107

Post by scott_s »

Something I haven't seen anyone here bring up yet: many URLs are meaningless to humans past the domain. For an example, look at the top of this page. The only semantic meaning in the URL for this post is `news.ycombinator.com`. The rest, `item?id=24156986`, is meaningless to a human. (But, of course, meaningful to HN's backend.) A lot of (most?) of the URLs on the web are not semantic. They're naked application look-ups. I claim that for this current page, there's no meaningful loss of information by just showing the domain.

But some URLs are semantic. I think losing those would lose useful information for human readers. If we could perfectly know which URLs have useful semantic information for users and which don't, and then only present those with full semantic meaning, I wouldn't mind much.

Main point: I see people saying things like "these designers think people are too stupid to understand URLS." But that ignores that some URLs are not actually meaningful to anyone.

Anticipated responses:

1. You are losing information by taking off the "application lookup" part: the information that an application lookup was made. Fair enough. But I claim it's a small loss.

2. We can never perfectly separate out the URLs with useful semantic information. Which, also probably true. But I think we can do a decent job, and as long as the full URL is present when I mouse-over it, I probably wouldn't object.

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

#108

Post by jorvi »

walrus01 wrote: post #86
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…

I encourage everyone to use Firefox on Android just for the one killer feature of being able to install the full desktop ublock origin plugin.

With Firefox axing the entire Servo team along with a bunch of other technical people, I am very afraid for its future in terms of technical development. Especially for the macOS version, that so far has always been the red-headed stepchild.

It’s got me in quite a pickle since the only alternative that is privacy friendly and cross platform (macOS, Linux, iOS, Android) is Brave, and Brave, despite good or at least decent intentions, has done some questionable things.

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

#109

Post by crazypython »

filleduchaos wrote: post #57
Santosh83 wrote: post #47

Vote with your choices (use a different browser). That's the only way to address such behaviour. Yes, I know the 95% out there who don't even know what a browser is but only know Chrome's icon gives access to the web won't understand any of this and they will continue giving mega-corporations a critical mass of unquestioning users to be used, but we have no other options. We either express our voices, no matter if th…

> Yes, I know the 95% out there who don't even know what a browser is but only know Chrome's icon gives access to the web won't understand any of this I find it fascinating how some people in tech bubbles think everyone else is a stupid sheep who can't possibly understand such incredibly complex concepts like what a "browser" is.

People think the screen is the computer.

People think Google is the web.

People think the search engine is the browser.

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

#110

Post by sethammons »

filleduchaos wrote: post #57
Santosh83 wrote: post #47

Vote with your choices (use a different browser). That's the only way to address such behaviour. Yes, I know the 95% out there who don't even know what a browser is but only know Chrome's icon gives access to the web won't understand any of this and they will continue giving mega-corporations a critical mass of unquestioning users to be used, but we have no other options. We either express our voices, no matter if th…

> Yes, I know the 95% out there who don't even know what a browser is but only know Chrome's icon gives access to the web won't understand any of this I find it fascinating how some people in tech bubbles think everyone else is a stupid sheep who can't possibly understand such incredibly complex concepts like what a "browser" is.

I've met very intelligent people who have zero understanding of computers: they have been trained to click certain icons to be able to reach google for a search. I'd be interested in data supporting either more or less fluency than we might expect - but you wont be able to do an online survey to get it :)
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