161–170 of 497 posts
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…
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…
Security is a very small factor, if a factor at all, for Chrome to have become dominant. The main reason is because they keep/kept pushing everyone to install Chrome when you visited https://google.com (by showing you a small popup window).
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They are boiling frogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog Little changes over time, so you don't see the end game right away. Signed exchanges and further hacking up / hiding the URL will come. This change only hides some of the URL, with a hover action that shows it again.
I really don't get why people think that signed exchanges are this super nefarious plot to destroy the open web when it's exactly the thing that would make a distributed web possible. Disconnecting content authorship and publishing with hosting so that literally anyone can host web content securely is fantastic! * Want to bootstrap your IPFS network? You can safely and securely host a huge chunk of the web from big p…
My biggest concern is that the request will go to a google-owned server, where google can fully track me, and my browser would be lying to me about being on a non-google estate I might assume be free from Google’s tracking.
Site-owners will now also be forced to buy into Google Analytics since they have no requests in their own server-logs to analyse.
It’s a power-grab. And obviously google is doing this to increase their ability to do full internet-wide tracking.
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…
I'm certainly not an average user, but I am a human. The URL on nearly every site gives me all sorts of information.
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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…
I realize hindsight bias is at work, but I think I preferred Microsoft playing the Shitbag Monopolist role. They weren't passive aggressive about it, at least.
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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 de…
Considering their main revenue sources will likely be decimated, it makes sense to focus resources on the primary browser engine, and allow the open source community to build out the experimental features, moving temporary resources there as needed.
The thing with Open Source is that even if Mozilla Corp goes under, all of us can continue building out Firefox like a regular open source project. Or the Linux foundation could pick it up, etc.
That's literally how Firefox was created in the first place, as an open source continuation of the Netscape browser.
Using Firefox will lead to improvements that will persist even beyond Mozilla Corp. In the meanwhile, Mozilla Corp can be looked at as an experiment to commercially and profitably develop Firefox, which, if it fails, will require us to switch to the non commercial models that are driving several other open source projects.
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> Chrome for Android already modifies the address bar on AMP pages How does it do this? The URL looks totally as I'd expect (google.com/amp/) - I'm on version 84.0
They are boiling frogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog Little changes over time, so you don't see the end game right away. Signed exchanges and further hacking up / hiding the URL will come. This change only hides some of the URL, with a hover action that shows it again.
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> 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…
I'd say that it's just as common to hear "google Our Brand" as "www.brand.com" at the end of television adverts now. That's entirely anecdotal, but Google (or other search engines, but basically Google) has been for a long time the way to access sites. I see people every day searching for a brand and clicking rather than appending ".com". It's more convenient. If Google can profit off laziness, they will.
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.
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 company is playing embrace extend extinguish to a T and they are nearing the end game.
I switched to Firefox this year and so can you! Just download it, install it, and then clear your Chrome history so it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Firefox is really nice and I was surprised that I don’t miss Chrome at all (except for the developer tools color picker).
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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.