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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

#171

Post by bagacrap »

freedomben wrote: post #164
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…

I don't agree at all that the URL is meaningless to humans. If I want my friend to read this page, I copy the link and send it to him. That ID above is clearly the comment page ID. I don't have to see the backend code to know that. I'm certainly not an average user, but I am a human. The URL on nearly every site gives me all sorts of information.

this change to the browser doesn't prevent you from copying and pasting. The URL reveals itself when you put focus in the location bar.

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

#172

Post by _underfl0w_ »

oefrha wrote: post #23
aquova wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's really their justification, then I wish they would take the approach that Firefox does - show the full URL but have the domain name in white and the rest of the URL in a muted color. It provides the full information as well as highlighting the most important info for spotting a phishing scheme.

> show the full URL but have the domain name in white and the rest of the URL in a muted color Which is exactly what they do at the moment.

Meaning that the need for the new hiding feature is... what, exactly?

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

#173

Post by Beldin »

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.

I tried. Tab switching was - for me - horrible compared to Chrome (chrome:swipe down, swipe address bar down, select tab you want from carousel).

I kept looking if i missed this obvious feature. I tried to live without it, but Firefox mobile's tab switching just turned out to be a deal breaker for me.

If anyone had some tips: please!! I'd vastly prefer using FF on mobile.

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

#174

Post by bitexploder »

axaxs wrote: post #102
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.

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.

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

#175

Post by aden1ne »

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.

Anecdotally, it seems computer literacy is actually dropping over time. I taught an entry-level scripting course aimed at medical graduate students for several years, and each year the number of students who did not comprehend even the concept of files and folders was higher than the previous year.

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

#178

Post by kmeisthax »

Spivak wrote: post #111
tyingq wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think most of the people angry about signed exchanges necessarily want a distributed web (everyone hosts), they want the old decentralized model (many servers with different content). They want Google to stop telling them how to format their website, and they want Google to stop rehosting their website as a condition of search-engine access. That last one in particular isn't a centralization issue as much as it is a copyright concern. If people are angry about technology that makes it easier for Google to proxy their content, they sure as shit aren't going to want technology that lets randos do it too.

Not to mention, the decentralized web also means more privacy concerns. In the old model, the only entity that knows you downloaded a particular file is the server you talk to. With AMP, Google is now involved with that data flow. This is a third reason why people hate AMP, but it could be worse. Google is at least still a moderately trustworthy entity for a lot of people. However, what about Archive.org? What about Amazon, Facebook, ByteDance, or Brave Software? Each entity has far different trust implications compared to Google. You may trust them more or less. Just signing the web content only validates that the content itself hasn't been tampered with, not that the place you got it from is going to have your privacy interests in mind.

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

#179

Post by wolco »

d99kris wrote: post #66
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…

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.

Apple has it's own goals of hiding technical information from the user.

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

#180

Post by teddyh »

hu3 wrote: post #123
Ndymium wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal has already been renewed: https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...

> 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?
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