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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

#201

Post by paulryanrogers »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #169
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 only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed. 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 compan…

Consider also changing your default search to StartPage or Duck Duck Go

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

#202

Post by spanhandler »

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.

They became the villain when they started deliberately positioning the ads on their search results screen to trick people. Which I'm sure makes them lots and lots of money but is definitely evil.

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

#203

Post by kmeisthax »

avodonosov wrote: post #159

Even today's protocol hiding is so inconvenient, who is making these decisions, do the use computers regularly?

The average user sees http://123.45.67.89/~sk/microsoft.com/techsupport as a legitimate Microsoft website. That's what this change is intended to fix: users that see a domain in any part of the URL as being valid. They want to change it to only show the part that's actually security relevant. If you tell the average user "Look for Microsoft in the URL", and they find it in the path, they're going to fall for a phishing scam.

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

#204

Post by UncleMeat »

dwheeler wrote: post #11
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…

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.

All of the TLS handshake configurations are hidden from your UI. It is hard to see "what's going on". You aren't shown a cert signature each time you request a page. Yet the lock icon doesn't get hate.

The non-domain information in a URL is useless for making security decisions for virtually 100% of users. If anything, it has negative utility since you can make URLs nearly arbitrarily confusing as part of a phishing attack.

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

#205

Post by bambax »

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.

Yes!! When I see other people browsing on Android without uBlock I'm in awe of their patience.

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

#206

Post by CptCrunch »

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…

Google has not only become dominant because their product is good. First and foremost, they leveraged their market power through android and their search engine to get people to use chrome.

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

#207

Post by nessunodoro »

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.

Google is many different companies and products, and some of them I'm so grateful for. They provide a simple product that does something magically better than the competition, don't screw with the recipe. I give them my data because I like the service.

But the company-wide decision to manipulate the URL as a business strategy drains all my enthusiasm. The "U" is really important! The URL is basically a filename that you use to access the data store called the Internet. Don't take it away from me by the brute force of market dominance. I need to be sure of where I'm addressing my packets. Don't tamper with that essential construct.

I use both browsers, but without Firefox, I'd be lost in the wilderness. With its recent layoffs I'm worried about the web.

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

#208

Post by greyfox »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #169
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 only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed. 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 compan…

"With Firefox succumbing this week..."

Firefox succumbed to what? Genuinely curious, i had not heard this.

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

#209

Post by pdmccormick »

greyfox wrote: post #208
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that Google has endlessly more clout and depth than AOL and my fear is that where AOL failed, Google may succeed. 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 compan…

"With Firefox succumbing this week..." Firefox succumbed to what? Genuinely curious, i had not heard this.

There were a large number of layoffs at Mozilla, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336 .

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

#210

Post by switch11 »

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…

agreed 100%

Google revenue is slowly going down

Only option for Google is to pretend Internet doesn't exist

Anyone who is using Adwords or doing Search Engine Optimization

look at what results look like

It's 50% to 70% traffic being routed to Google

remaining being routed mostly to people who pay a lot to Adwords

*

It's almost purely Pay to Play now in most of the lucrative areas

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