Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
No! WWW is not antiquated. WWW is a perfectly valid sub domain for use in (ready for it?)...hosting a web page!
Other sub domains often used include remote, webmail, ftp, vpn, etc. Don't just implicitly tie all apps and protocols to the parent domain, and rely on the app to assume functionality!
Life is not for the lazy.
Change for the sake of change is the enemy of usability.
#DeleteFacebook