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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

#331

Post by anchpop »

emptyparadise wrote: post #233
bootlooped wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to laypeople. Most people have no idea what query params are, or even what part of the url the top level domain is. You can explain what they are easily, but it still wouldn't be useful to laypeople. What can my mom do with "item?id=24156986"? Outside of developing something that interfaces with HN, I don't know what I would do with that info either.

A layperson wouldn't know what the "7394" in "7394 Foobar Road" means or why "Foobar Road" is a road called "Foobar" but that does not mean we should give Google the right to eliminate street addresses. A URL is an address. All your mom needs to know is that if she goes to https://news.ycombimator.com/item?id=24156986 , she will end up at something and she will be able to come back to it later, that's what's useful a…

The average person knows exactly what the "7384" means, they understand it as a number that uniquely identifies a house along that street

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

#332

Post by terrortrain »

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…

You can also use an ad blocking DNS, it's been working great for me

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

#333

Post by kcb »

GrinningFool wrote: post #323
crazygringo wrote: post #136

Remember folks, Apple has been doing this in Safari since 2014. And there's been zero uproar over it at all. I don't understand why people suddenly hate this just because it's Google. For most users, total focus on the domain name is a security feature . For 99% of users, what comes after the domain name might as well be gibberish. I mean, it is a majority of the time.

The first time I used Safari and didn't see a full URL was the last time I used Safari. I didn't raise a fuss or take to twitter, I just stopped using it. I'm probably not alone. In addition, Safari has a very small slice of browser usage in the overall scheme of things. I suspect the uproar would be just as vocal if their usage numbers were in the range of Chrome's.

Same here. Recently I though I'd try out Safari again. Started browsing reddit and kept forgetting what subreddit I was on. It was then I noticed something was wrong.

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

#334

Post by andrewmutz »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #309
andrewmutz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's been explained elsewhere in the thread.

Link? I can't find anyone to actually explain how truncating the URL actually benefits Google's business. Comparisons to AOL are very hand-wavy.

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

#335

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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.

Too many overpaid people who had little interest in building a web browser.

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

#336

Post by p1mrx »

magicalist wrote: post #70

The Chromium blog post (which points out that like Safari on the Mac there's a setting now (not just a flag) to disable it): https://blog.chromium.org/2020/08/helping-people-spot-spoofs...

"Always show full URLs" is such a breath of fresh air. It eliminates all the URL butchering (e.g. inconsistent hiding of http/https) that Chrome had been doing for more than a decade.

Though I'm not seeing the option by default on a fresh install of Chrome 86; hopefully that's just a rollout glitch.

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

#337

Post by whywhywhywhy »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #278
adsjhdashkj wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently. Though Mozilla is giving no clear plans on continuing the projects importance. If anything it seems Mozilla is planning for an eventual sunset. Hoping to have revenue alternatives for when Firefox is irrelevant and they stop supporting it. Firing a team building a meaningful advancement in Firefox's tech stack is a big signal, imo.

Yeah that was devastating this week but maybe it can somehow reverse itself, I don’t know.

Why would we want a continuation of what isn’t working.

Let it die, rebuild from the ruins.

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

#338

Post by curiousllama »

jacquesm wrote: post #304
curiousllama wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOL had a particular mismanagement problem that Google doesn't have. AOL didn't lack depth: they literally had email (@aol.com), social media (AIM), video-calling (Vonage), cloud filesharing (Xdrive) and so much more. Ultimately, they failed because (1) they were overvalued to begin with and (2) had a bad innovation model (top-down) that led them to (a) over-commit to online ads and (b) under-commit to broadband. Goo…

> Google is reacting to the Walled Garden trend, not driving it. I could follow you right up to that bit.

Yea, actually fair, bit of a non-sequitur.

I meant to say that Google is well-positioned to take advantage of being a Walled Garden, and is doing so now because the model is being built out out elsewhere, both domestically (Apple, Amazon) and abroad (WeChat, Jio).

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

#339

Post by xemdetia »

polote wrote: post #112

The title is misleading and people don't read the article. Chrome is not hiding the bar address, it is only showing the domain in normal times, and showing the full url when you hover the bar Personally I find it better for non technical people, because they can focus on the domain only. For tech people you have the option to keep the full url visible at all time, which fixes the issue. As for people complaining abou…

> Personally I find it better for non technical people, because they can focus on the domain only. For tech people you have the option to keep the full url visible at all time, which fixes the issue.

I think a large part of my repulsion to this change is mostly because Chrome has a history of removing options constantly. A weird default with a setting to get to more expected behaviour is fine, but I have no faith in them to not remove the full url visible at all time option at this point.

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

#340

Post by gruez »

bityard wrote: post #308
aftbit wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this shell script as `chrome-new` in my path for testing in Chrome and the rare site that is broken in Firefox. It gives me a totally clean profile each time to minimize the amount of Google spying that goes on and reduce my tendency to use the browser for anything but the current task. Sadly despite --no-make-default-browser, it still asks me with an infobar every time I start it. #!/bin/sh test -e "$(which c…

Don't you get the same thing using Guest Mode?

AFAIK guest mode acts like incognito when it comes to storage behavior (changes stay in-memory and are not persisted to disk, and therefore available storage is noticeably lower than with a regular profile), so it will trigger incognito mode detection scripts on some times.
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