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Could Google's Test of Hiding Complete URLs In Chrome Become a Standard?

Posted by timothy on from the dumbed-down-or-neatened-up? dept.

MojoKid (1002251) writes "The address bar in a Web browser has been a standard feature for as long as Web browsers have been around — and that's not going to be changing. What could be, though, is exactly what sort of information is displayed in them. In December, Google began rolling-out a limited test of a feature in Chrome called "Origin Chip", a UI element situated to the left of the address bar. What this "chip" does is show the name of the website you're currently on, while also showing the base URL. To the right, the actual address bar shows nothing, except a prompt to "Search Google or type URL". With this implementation, a descriptive URL would not be seen in the URL bar. Instead, only the root domain would be seen, but to the left of the actual address bar. This effectively means that no matter which page you're on in a given website, all you'll ever see when looking at the address bar is the base URL in the origin chip. What helps here is that the URL is never going to be completely hidden. You'll still be able to hit Ctrl + L to select it, and hopefully be able to click on the origin chip in order to reveal the entire URL. Google could never get rid of the URL entirely, because it's required in order to link someone to a direct location, obviously."

1 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And the question of the day is... by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Informative

    They can't break anything by SEEING it.

    Yes they CAN. For example, by SEEING the actual URL redirects that Google uses to track everyone's moves(*), people might wake up and PROTEST, or worse, STOP using Google's spyware.

    Hiding information breeds ignorance, and ignorance leads to exploitation. When companies want to hide information, it's usually for their own benefit. Google is no exception.

    (*) don't believe me? Next time you're browsing the search results returned from Google, look at the source for the links. It LOOKS like you're clicking on a legitimate url, but in actual fact you're clicking on a Google spy link, that FIRST talks to google servers so they can track what you're doing, and THEN sends your browser to the place you thought you were going.