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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.
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?
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?
This is especially going to be problems as the suppression of "www" is also done when one clicks on the address bar.
If you have different content between www and *., and a user clicks on the address bar, copies what is displayed and sends it to someone else, the recipient will see different content than the sender, despite otherwise appearing to be the same URL.
Still, easily fixable by adding the "www" when someone clicks on the address bar and solely suppressing when the address bar does not have focus.
Thirty four characters live here.
Without disabling this feature, it's not apparent if I'm at www.domainname.tld or domainname.tld which may be different pages.
if you click on the address bar it displays the correct (unabbreviated) url
Firefox has done something similar for a while. I'm surprised there is a fuss now but kindof glad. Firefox's handling of subdomains especially autocompletion ignoring subdomains has annoyed me for a while.
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.
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.
Why is it up to Google to decide which details we should concern ourselves with?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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
Firefox has done something similar for a while. I'm surprised there is a fuss now but kindof glad. Firefox's handling of subdomains especially autocompletion ignoring subdomains has annoyed me for a while.
about:config
browser.urlbar.trimURLs = false
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
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.
Tested myself in Canary. You should try it too!
Thirty four characters live here.
www.domain.com and domain.com actually have different entries on the DNS records and can resolve to different servers. Most companies have set it up so the former redirects to the latter (or vice versa), but for the ones that haven't, obfuscating www.domain.com can lead to people typing in just domain.com when you have a www.domain.com server specifically set up to handle http requests (the regular domain.com handling other tasks like ftp, ssh, etc). Your domain.com server then has to handle the http request, and send a redirect message to the browser to go to www.domain.com instead. Basically it unnecessarily puts additional load onto your main server when you've set up a separate web server specifically to avoid that unnecessary load, and causes the client browser to take a fraction of a second longer to get to the real site.
If this change had been the other way around (automatically pre-pending www to domain.com) I wouldn't see a problem with it (aside from inconveniencing a few domain owners who've haven't correctly set up their www.domain.com NS entry into setting it up correctly). But stripping out the www creates unnecessary server load, wastes a tiny bit of time for the person browsing, confuses domain owners trying to troubleshoot what's actually going on, and has no tangible benefit other than "decluttering" the URL bar by 3 characters. From a troubleshooting standpoint, I'd rate this change almost as bad as ISPs who redirect domain typos to an advertising page, instead of an error page.
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.
When I am on a website I *never* care about the exact url. I am ok with just seeing a green sign that says "Slashdot, Inc.". I don't care about www or the full path. Clicking the sign I can see the full url and then enter the url of where I want to go.
I think this is the first step in getting there. Slowly remove unused pieces of information from the display. Today subdomain, tomorrow full path. And you are left with a cleaner user interface.
People are assuming google is forcing a url structure, they don't. They are simply "hiding" unused pieces.
On th eusability side, I am all for it. Location bar is ugly and it needs to go away. Copy-paste needs to be minimized, manual editing needs to be minimized. (fecebook.com?)
On the engineering side, urls must stay, and Google can do nothing about 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?
No, it's not. "www" implies an HTTP subdomain. You can't just assume that "domain.tld" also points to an HTTP server.
Their fall is imminent. They have the same delusions that befell Microsoft and others who thought they were "it"
Corporatism != Free Market
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)
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...
Even if the domain name records point at the exact same server, the content can still be different. Google is wrong to display one domain and show the content of the other, plain and simple.
Indeed. One of the main reasons for admins naming the web domain names www. was to reduce unnecessary traffic and load on machines resolving to the domain name itself. Users being taught to not enter www. defeats this purpose.
Another reason was to identify the purpose of the DNS entry in a non-URL context. There's seldom any confusion about what www.foobar.invalid and news.foobar.invalid DNS entries point to.
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".
Why is it up to Google to decide which details we should concern ourselves with?
It's not, but they want dumber, less informed users that can be more easily manipulated by *them*. They do this sort of stuff under the guise of helping users to not be manipulated by others. I'd rather have users that understand URLs and how things actually work.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not sure magically making things available when you start modifying things is great UX. I believe that consistency between states is important.
The other issue chrome introduced: copying the URL text you see is not what ends up in the clipboard.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I wish Chrome had not become so absurdly popular.
As soon as one browser becomes significantly more popular than the others, sites start targeting that browser, and are less afraid to say "If the site is broken for you, just use Chrome."
We already had this rodeo in the 00s with Internet Explorer, I do *NOT* want to go down that road again. It was utterly maddening to be forced to use a specific browser to use certain sites.
I use Safari on MacOS and iOS, and Firefox on Linux and Windows. I can't bring myself to faf about with Chrome and add to its numbers.
Because they're the ones who make Chrome. I don't understand this question, every aspect of the Chrome UI is up to Google.
Still, easily fixable by adding the "www" when someone clicks on the address bar and solely suppressing when the address bar does not have focus.
It's like the "http://" which is suppressed when using other pieces of the browser, but comes back when you give the omnibox focus.
Just like that suppression, I can't really figure out what the reasoning it. When you have an URL like:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
dicking around with the first 20 or 30 characters only helps so much. I mean, sure, you can elide it because it doesn't really add meaning, but on my laptop or desktop I have 1000+ pixels of horizontal space, so how does it help? On my phone I have much less space, to the point where I can't see much of the URL at all, so messing with those characters _still_ doesn't help much.
I can grant it's a tough problem, people have (misplaced) trust in the URL. They think that if they can't see the full URL, someone's hiding things from them. Unfortunately, someone can hide things from them even when showing the full URL, so...
I think the issue is it seems pointless to do ('www.' and especially 'm.' doesn't make urls magically harder). There's no real benefit and in a way it's patronizing to people to think they would be confused by the presence/absence of 4 characters.
On the flip side, messing with the display of urls can cause confusion. If a site doesn't have a 'mydomain.tld' and just has 'www.mydomain.tld', then someone verbally directing based on what they see in their browser would potentially be confused. Admittedly this isn't a common sort of situation, but why bother making things more complicated when there isn't any substantive benefit to be had?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Other than the 'amp' theory, I just don't see *how* this goes towards the end of helping people or manipulating people. It just feels senseless.
With the 'amp' theory, I don't see why they would need to 'ease in', they already treat amp differently than other things and already muddy the waters and don't make it obvious to users what's going on, so I don't see how this is a step toward further masking amp...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think half-measures in this regard aren't a good way of getting there if that's a good thing, it's just a confusing middle ground.
If you *want* to 'pretty up' the url, then go all out and make it visually obvious it's not a url until clicked for editing/copy/paste. Don't present something that looks like a url, but has been modified to be potentially invalid. This is not something that has to be 'gradually' moved to, it's something you do in one go or just don't do.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
i dont use that setting and this is what i get. but if i go to another site i see a diffrent url
https://www.simplycanning.com/canning-spaghetti-sauce-meatless.html
https://slashdot.org/..
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/08/0437229/google-slammed-over-chrome-change-that-strips-www-from-domain-urls.
so no clue whats happening but honestly leave it the F alone thier is no reason in this god green earth it need to be removed unless you want to trick peole.
Jack of all trades,master of none
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 ...
The www vs. m distinction is a good point. If I get shunted to some mobile page, that is something that I would like to be able to see at a glance without clicking on the url bar.
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.
This is in the same league as hiding file extensions in Windows - absolutely fantastic for criminals, a pain in the ass for the average user, and horrendous for support staff.
I firmly believe in bringing back hanging and flogging (possibly in the reverse order) for making non-essential changes to UIs
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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
Hey! Nice, I didn't remember about .invalid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Users stopped entering the www. long ago. Any web site operator already needs to work on the assumption that many won't.
Users stopped entering the www. long ago. Any web site operator already needs to work on the assumption that many won't.
There's a difference between supporting it and encouraging it.
If a million users go directly to www.sitename.invalid instead of sitename.invalid, causing a redirect or proxy operation, that's a win, even if another million go to sitename.invalid.
What Google does here is encouraging the wasteful behavior.
You already can. The mobile pages are obvious because they are completely crippled and missing any form of usability or information. If you end up on one and can't tell, is because the full site is also completely useless, and you might as well just stop visiting there.
...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
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.
How do you break up Facebook? (As in what parts of facebook goes to new companies)
As for Amazon, I would add WalMart to the list as well.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
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
They're not changing the actual URL, only HIDING the www part.
And if your site depends on www being there to get the content the user expected, you're doing it wrong!
Adding www or removing www is both equaly stupid and unwanted.
Yopu are potentially pointing to a different server that does not what Google thinks it does.
The reason as to why they do that is irrelevant and non of Googles business. A browser points to a server with a DNS entry and also a protocol and some subdomains and what not. So I want to see:
http://www.example.com/dir/file.php?X=1 and not
example.com/dir/file.php?X=1 or example.com or "Ranked number 17 on twitter" or a "your momma" joke , or an ad or anything else for whatever reason, except for the URL.
That is as a browser user. As a domain holder, I would expect the same and on top of that I should not need to defend or even explain myself why I do whatever it is I do.
If the messenger fucks up, you are allowed to shoot him.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Relative to your small world, maybe!
Forcing a change down the throats of the masses outside of proper channels is arrogant, unethical, and monopolizing.
It is anarchy at it's worst.
If you want to change a standard, go through the proper entity - IEEE, WWW, etc...
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.