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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

#151

Post by jorvi »

indymike wrote: post #140
jorvi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

The way to guarantee a future without an alternative browser is to not use an alternative browser.

I hear you, but simultaneously everyone (including me) has a certain limit to which they will be principled. If it happens like I mentioned, I will jump ship. On macOS, Firefox still guzzles battery compared to Chromium browsers. This seemed like a thing that, whilst not fixed, was actively being worked on. If I had to hazard a guess, that will slip heavily in priority now.

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

#152

Post by smlckz »

kergonath wrote: post #51
asimpletune wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why this is being downvoted, this is an accurate albeit sardonic description of what’s happening. People don’t want to visit AMP sites, they want to visit the site that’s the original source for their news, etc...

The premise “browsers are as powerful as OSes” is dubious. “Why do you need OSes” is something I would expect from someone who does not know how a computer works. Whilst they should probably be tweaked, address bars are central to the web as it is currently. Google should stay as far as possible from me and has no business telling me it approves of the sites I am browsing. I did not downvote the post, but there is no…

Now you know about web. Many (all?) people here (reading this shit) know. If you hear about what they are into, they are trying to get ''the next billion'' people into Their hands. Most of this ''next billion'' people don't have the time and/or courage to learn anything. They want to get their job done. (They will learn if they're forced to.)

What these big companies are trying to do is very clear. They don't want these fools to know much about web. If these people suddenly starts learning about how web works, that'd be a disaster (for Them).

Now, the address bar is just a distraction to them, nothing else. Now, if Google is removing them, let them. If the address bar is hidden, then there's less clutter. So, they'll think that it's better. (You and me know that isn't any better for us. I'd be really angry if they completely remove it.)

> Why are you referring to those big companies as 'Them'?

< You don't know yet?

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

andrewmutz wrote: post #97
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…

Specifically how does this change benefit Google? The security problems that it addresses are very concrete and specific. I can clearly see how this change helps novice users. How does this change benefit Google? It seems very hand-wavy. Edit: downvotes, but no explanation of any specific benefit to Google from this change

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by [deleted] »

andrewmutz wrote: post #97
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…

Specifically how does this change benefit Google? The security problems that it addresses are very concrete and specific. I can clearly see how this change helps novice users. How does this change benefit Google? It seems very hand-wavy. Edit: downvotes, but no explanation of any specific benefit to Google from this change

[deleted]

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

#155

Post by bonestamp2 »

rimliu wrote: post #119
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.

hmm, the only thing it hides for me is the protocol, and that one is easy understand: a padlock shown: https. "Not Secure":http.

To get what you're seeing, I had to turn on the option to see the full URL. Otherwise it just shows the domain. That was several years ago though, so maybe it's no the default anymore.

I get it though, most people really only care about the domain and in fact, trimming everything else makes the actual domain easier to spot when it's not the domain you wanted, such as in a phishing attempt.

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

#156

Post by netsharc »

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.

It seems like we've reached that already. I've seen TV ads where they just say "Search for $KEYWORD" instead of a URL (admittedly that's more average-user friendly than making them input dots and slashes). Or posters that have [f]/someFacebookPageName or [i]/instagramUsername with the icons to indicate Facebook/Instagram.

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

#157

Post by smlckz »

kergonath wrote: post #116
brianush1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood the "Why do you need OSes" as "Why would you use Windows when you can use ChromeOS, since the only thing you'll ever need to open is Chrome" And all of these opinions are obviously not held by the poster but are rather what the poster believes Google wants.

If it is sarcasm, it’s not great. These exact points are commonly made by people who clearly take them seriously. These people are obnoxious enough, there’s no need to reproduce their talking points. My experience is that as much as some geeks love to go on about web apps, real people still do more than browse the web on their computers.

There's more ''consumers'' out there than ''real people''.

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

#158

Post by Mathnerd314 »

scott_s wrote: post #107

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…

The 24156986 is semantic though; the ids are assigned sequentially to submissions. Early submissions have tiny ids like 495. So they are at least as meaningful as bug tracker ID's or version numbers.

Now, it is true that version numbers etc. could be more meaningful. Jeff Atwood wrote an old article about the "infinite version" in Chrome, where the version number basically doesn't matter until you're checking to see if you're up-to-date. Personally I've switched to using dates / times in my ID's. HN could do that too; an ID like 2020-08-14-10-12-13-99 is longer than the current ID's but not by much. But overall it seems hard to draw a line in the sand where dates are semantic and version numbers aren't.

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

#160

Post by oblio »

magicalist wrote: post #101
inopinatus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing you mentioned doesn't like it's too far fetched for the next step :-)
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