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Google Slammed Over Chrome Change That Strips 'www' From Domain URLs (itwire.com)
An anonymous reader quotes ITWire:
Google's move to strip out the www in domains typed into the address bar, beginning with version 69 of its Chrome browser, has drawn an enormous amount of criticism from developers who see the move as a bid to cement the company's dominance of the Web. The criticism comes a few days after Chrome's engineering manager Adrienne Porter Felt told the American website Wired that URLs need to be got rid of altogether. The change in Chrome version 69 means that if one types in a domain such as www.itwire.com into the browser search bar, the www portion is stripped out in the address bar when the page is displayed.
When asked about this change in a long discussion thread on a mailing list, a Google staffer wrote: "www is now considered a 'trivial' subdomain, and hiding trivial subdomains can be disabled in flags (will also disable hiding the URL scheme)..." A Google staffer attempted to justify the change, writing: "The subdomains reappear when editing the URL so people type the correct one. They disappear in the steady-state display case because this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases..." But this drew an angry response from a poster who questioned the statement "this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases" and asked: "According to who? This is simply an opinion stated as a fact...."
This is not the first time Google has been criticised for its moves to change the fundamental structure of URLs. Its Accelerated Mobile Pages, introduced in October 2015, have been criticised for obscuring the original URL of a page and reducing the chances of a reader going back to the original website. Probably for this reason, Apple last year decided that version 11 of iOS would update its Safari browser so that AMP links would be stripped out of an URL when the story was shared... "This is Google making subdomain usage decisions for other entities outside of Google," said yet another poster. "My domains and how subdomains are assigned and delegated are not Google's business to decide."
The controversy moved Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein to write a new blog post. Its title? "Here's How to Disable Google Chrome's Confusing New URL Hiding Scheme."
UPDATE (9/15/18): Google has announced that after public outcry, they'll return the 'www' to Chrome's URL's -- but only until the next release.
When asked about this change in a long discussion thread on a mailing list, a Google staffer wrote: "www is now considered a 'trivial' subdomain, and hiding trivial subdomains can be disabled in flags (will also disable hiding the URL scheme)..." A Google staffer attempted to justify the change, writing: "The subdomains reappear when editing the URL so people type the correct one. They disappear in the steady-state display case because this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases..." But this drew an angry response from a poster who questioned the statement "this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases" and asked: "According to who? This is simply an opinion stated as a fact...."
This is not the first time Google has been criticised for its moves to change the fundamental structure of URLs. Its Accelerated Mobile Pages, introduced in October 2015, have been criticised for obscuring the original URL of a page and reducing the chances of a reader going back to the original website. Probably for this reason, Apple last year decided that version 11 of iOS would update its Safari browser so that AMP links would be stripped out of an URL when the story was shared... "This is Google making subdomain usage decisions for other entities outside of Google," said yet another poster. "My domains and how subdomains are assigned and delegated are not Google's business to decide."
The controversy moved Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein to write a new blog post. Its title? "Here's How to Disable Google Chrome's Confusing New URL Hiding Scheme."
UPDATE (9/15/18): Google has announced that after public outcry, they'll return the 'www' to Chrome's URL's -- but only until the next release.
Well that is gong to give me problems. Content on mydomain.com is totaaly different to www.mydomain.com, along with other sub domains.
This is great for blogspot.
Add this to the arbitrary scare tactics for http pages... and the AMP debacle...
if you haven't figured it out yet, Google is evil. Period.
Google is blatantly trolling. 69 involves stripping! Who'da thunk?
I don't see what all the fuss is about. The www is rarely important, and when it is it's because I've clicked on the url to change it. This just seems like a smart (but very minor) step for usability.
This honestly sounds like change for the sake of change. I think too many corporations do this and to many managers do this to justify their salaries. Leave it alone! How about working to make Chrome more secure? If you're going to do something, do something productive and meaningful.
But it doesn't mean you can just ignore it. In the URL syntax that part of the URL identifies the host and possibly a user id and port. You can't automatically *know* that "www.somedomain.net" refers to a different host than "somedomain.net", and even if it did the host would not necessarily be configured to return the same information to an HTTP GET.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You don't get to decide how other people structure their resources.
And if we're at that point, maybe something drastically needs to change. Civil and criminal liability for damages resulting from altered resource locators that fraudulently misrepresent the resource being served?
if you're not a web developer and pretend you can't use the internet without Chrome you're either 1) a browser connoiseur, 2) a cry-baby, and most likely 3) wrong.
Like most openness hostile and user control hostile changes coming out of big companies, the setting to disable this feature will only last for a little while.. So enjoy your hidden workaround while you can because Google does have the power to change how this works. You WILL eventually be forced to comply, willing or not. And Firefox, being run by the whipped dogs in their leadership, will yet again lap up this user hostile design because anything Google does *must* be good.
I can't wait for Firefox to copy this in 2 years. It's gonna be so rad. I love when they hide things. It's so much more convenient now that viewing a site's certificate takes 5 clicks instead of 2 for example!
Captcha: applaud
I applaud Silicon Valley's race to the bottom
Steve Jobs famously referred to Google as "That Montessouri School in Mountain View." He was right. In recent times their culture has gotten so autistic that when they're replaced with AI it will cause a noticeable improvement in the humanity of Google as a whole. They, along with the social media platforms are basically bright kids playing with dynamite.
If you're really upset about it, put a little banner on your website that mentions that your site doesn't work properly with Chrome and that the user should pick a different browser.
...same as the old boss.
I think this post is trying to blow up the controversy here.
Google is *not* altering URLs, they just changed what the browser displays by default. It doesn't display the URL, it displays the domain (and in some trivial cases, only some of the domain).
You can agree with that or not, but all this "change the fundamental structure of URLs" is just someone blowing smoke.
It's not all sub-domains that are hidden, only particularly useless ("trivial") sub-domains. If your server really does give different responses for `foobar.com` and `www.foobar.com`, then 1) WTF were you thinking, and 2) do you really think your *users* will be able to figure that out?
If the URL is necessary for your users to navigate your site, please learn to design web sites. The page content, page title, and domain name should be enough to say what you are looking at, and how it relates to other content on the same site.
The URLs are still there, you just don't have to look at them all the time. They are there if you want to look at them, edit them, or copy them, no change there, they are just not displayed in their full gory detail all the time.
I don't feel I'm getting valuable information from my current URL containing "/story/18/09/08/0437229/google-slammed....." over just knowing the top-level domain and page title.
Most people don't understand URLs at all, they are just magic texts that the browser shows. Showing information to a user that they do not understand and don't know what to do with (except ignore) is just bad usability.
Isn't "www" the hostname?
Just force us to use Google search for everything.
Also, I hope someone brings back AOL keywords. I love these walled gardens.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The Googidiocracy future of urls.
When I go to my employer's homepage (that certainly does not do any redirects), it also only displays the portion of the URL without "www".
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
When did hostnames turn into subdomains? A domain is a container, a hostname is a unit in the domain. If the subdomain www is trivial, does that mean only hostnames like blah.www.* are affected?
Did someone at Google suddenly forget, it is entirely possible for 'mydomain.com' to yield a different page than 'www.mydomain.com'?
It's not common, but it's doable and some people might do this. This change makes no sense to me.
It seems to strip the 'http://' and 'https://' COME ON GOOGLE, I've been teaching users for YEARS to watch their URL box and be wary of they don't see HTTPS. Goddamn Google you are stupid.
Note that 1) copying the URL shows the whole domain, including 'www', even if it's not displayed in the bar, 2) only 'www' is removed, other subdomains are shown, and 3) most (well-)configured websites show the same page with or without the 'www', therefore I wouldn't qualify the move as 'evil' at first glance, more a simpler URL display.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
You can't CNAME an authoritative domain. So you do what makes sense, you CNAME www.authoritative.domain and use that to load balance the website.
Now you might offer a redirect from authoritative.domain to www.authoritative.domain. It sounds like Chrome will have a difficult time explaining what just happened to the user.
Why break the internet?
Their fall is imminent. They have the same delusions that befell Microsoft and others who thought they were "it"
Corporatism != Free Market
On the one hand, the idea to show mockups of the url is not a clever one.
On the other hand, it would be fair if the statement âjust an opinion, stated as factâ(TM) drew a response of âwho cares?â(TM). Everybody is a critic these days.
Soon you'll only be able to view .google domains using chrome or have them appear in search results. Evil, we do that now.
Using google-chrome isn't something that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases either.
The www. nonsense is a leftover from an ancient time and should be eliminated
Until it is eliminated, it should be displayed
Browsers should display full and accurate URLs
The same thing goes for file browsers. Hiding extensions is wrong, and increases confusion
I will totally loathe and detest this change forever and curse it to /dev/null if...
1. It messes up automated tools such as Selenium - if sites can't be tested, things get unsafe.
2. It impacts the ability of users to share URLs by visual inspection .
3. It impacts the ability of users to determine if they're secure.
4. It allows a browser hijacker to conceal what site someone is on by editing what is displayed.
5. It creates a security hole through improper string handling.
6. The extra complexity contains code defects that impact performance or stability.
2 & 3 are likely true. 1 & 4 are entirely plausible. 5 & 6 are certainly possible.
I want Google to show it has answers to all six questions, answers that are acceptable.
If it has thought about it beyond the immediate visual impact, I'd be surprised but maybe I could be convinced. I see no evidence they've thought it through. As the wise monkey sage Ross Noble once said, they haven't thought it through.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Putting this plain an simply:
1) there is no RFC standard that says this makes sense
2) www and 'not'www are two *different* things and can resolve to different things
3) This smells awfully like the start of the 'embrace, extend' approach that another company used to do.
Standards exist for a reason, and the RFC process is the standard that should be adhered to. Abuse or circumvention of this process is not conducive to a better internet.
In Finland, there is this silly custom where www.somedomain.fi will get you what you want, but somedomain.fi will not. These are the minority, definitely,. but there are quite a lot of them.
Hopefully the good Google software engineers have anticipated this and will automatically look up the www.someting version of any given site.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Chrome also provides an "Enterprise" MSI, I'm wondering if they will enable / force this too. In my job, I NEED the FULL URL displayed. One of my functions is to ensure the PKI certificates all work properly, I have to make certs for a vast amount of different devices, the last thing I need is LESS information. We will just have to use a GPO to stop Google from updating, even though this goes against the DoD STIG of keeping all software updated.
Hey Google, is it possible to disable this flag in a GPO, using the provided ADMX files? Is this available in the HKLM\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome\ registry subtree? I'm surprised this "trivial" setting isn't already in V1R12 of the DISA STIG...
Firefox has been doing this for years, but I always turn it off in about:config.
browser.urlbar.trimURLs boolean false
If you can do that in Chrome too? This is manufactured outrage. Nobody who isn't balancing angels on the head of a pin actually cares.
Looks like Google has already closed the discussion on this OUT, within 48 hours. They merged several other threads of people complaining about this into this thread, there are other various issues people reported; but it seems like Google just doesn't care. This also strips out "www" anywhere in the URL, so "https://sub.www.example.com" is changed to just showing "sub.example.com".
nevermind URLs, chrome 69 is just plain ugly (at least on android, I use firefox on desktop so haven't seen chrome there but I assume it is similar design). Looks like they are trying to copy 15-year-old apple products with the round text fields. And the icons of frequently-used sites on the home page are needlessly shrunk down to a fraction of their normal size so it is hard to tell what they are, and stuck in the middle of an empty circle that just wastes space, for no apparent reason other than to look bad. When stuff like this makes it into production I have to wonder if anyone is even running google these days.
I consider chrome to be a trivial browser, Firefox rules!
I think Google has become a real problem for the web because of it dominance in many aspects of the internet. With Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, Google search and Googles cloud services. This has much bigger effect on the internet that I don’t want.
There are, in fact, cases where the "www" is necessary to make a site work. For example, a main domain controlled by a different company than the "www" and without a redirect or using a different site alltogether. Hiding the "www" is just going to make matters worse in the long run. If a user is telling someone a URL and they DID have to use "www" to get there and yet read it off a screen that hides the "www", it will cause problems.
Google, STOP trying to hide and "simplify" everything- not everything in life is simple nor fits into what you think it should be like...
The criticism comes a few days after Chrome's engineering manager Adrienne Porter Felt told the American website Wired that URLs need to be got rid of altogether.
That would mark the final transition of the desktop to "apps" ...
'course, you'll need a way to organize your "apps". Maybe we could come up with some sort of naming scheme ...
Gotta use Google search engine to find them.
If you really want Google to do something, hit them where it hurts. Pressure Microsoft, Firefox, or Opera to start resolving several of their www.domain.com and domain.com to different pages with big "You could be being exploited right now!" pages.
I can understand normals not knowing any better but the fact that people here using Chrome is just sad. Have more respect for yourselves.
Bad enough that we have to deal with "captive portals" and ISP DNS hijacks that break everything under the sun for absolutely no good reason what-so-ever. Now we have to worry about Google breaking things for a laugh.
www.something.com and something.com are identical. They always have been. Regardless of Google. .com or otherwise.
Either the opponents don't understand that or their tinfoil hats are too tight.
Am I the only one that expects a truckload of CVEs to appear now that it is trivial to hide exploits via automatically hidden sub-domains?
Now is time to go and add google-tried-to-remove-www.mydomain.com and configure website to redirect there if user is using Chrome to reach www.mydomain.com
Many scam sites now use free SSL certs.
It's getting rarer for a false URL to not have a proper SSL cert.
...likely don't understand URLs *at* *all* anyway.
A browser disregarding web standards is a sure way to lose a large chunk of its user base. Of course, that's fine with me, I'd love to see more people using Firefox.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"Some men set themselves up as an example to others. I set myself up as a warning."
- attributed to Mark Twain
Famously?
Right now your post is the only thing that comes up when searching Google for "That Montessouri School in Mountain View" in quotes. Fix the spelling of Montessori, and nothing comes up.
Here's how you can get it back at least for now:
Open: chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains and set it to "Disabled".
Call me crazy, but if I could redesign the DNS, neither subdomains nor TLDs would exist. Just a flat name hierarchy.
I absolutely hate it when the www. is required. It's just lazy SysAdmin of the web server. The WWW is completely unnecessary. Must allow for other sub-domains however.
www.domain.com is not the same as domain.com in DNS. They both could be configured the same, but often they often deliberately resolve to a different destination. Chrome is effectively eliminating the ability of domain owners to utilize the www. subdomain as the owner sees fit. This will most likely force those who use the www subdomain today to begin using another designation for their webservers. One would hope that the replacement would become as widely recognized as www someday but I think that is unlikely. I think that google must have an ulterior motive to go after one of the more widely used subdomains on the planet. Luckily there are plenty of other browsers out there. Hopefully this will lead to a shift in browser usage to once again balance the landscape. It's happened repeatedly over the years when a browser manufacturer did something users perceived to not be in their best interests. In fact, this phenomenon is what resulted in chrome's current market lead.
If they remove www, how will I know i'm still on the world wide web? I could be anywhere!
Do you realize that
mydomain.com
www.mydomain.com
ftp.mydomain.com
can all resolve to different addresses?
You are creating a potential nightmare for no good reason.
Look, I know smart people don't have to think -- because you already know everything -- but maybe every now and again you can pretend you are stupid and give thinking a try?
many companies using microsoft active directory must use their internal dns servers. myco.com does not point to same ip as www.myco.com. you have to do annoying registry hacks to even make that possible. internal users can only get to public website at www.myco.com. without www you cannot access the site. sounds like chrome is eliminating themselves from many large corp networks.
I see "little Microsoft" are at it again. Using their browser dominance to decide things for us that we didn't ask them to decide. It takes me back to the days when IE decided we didn't need to see webserver error messages.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47