Google Officially Strips “WWW” and “HTTPS://“ from Chrome’s Address Bar

[Tsing]

Despite plenty of opposition, Google has stopped showing "www" and "https://" in Chrome 76. Users who want to view the full URL can do so by double clicking on the address bar, but the subdomains will likely be hidden by default going forward. (This is actually the second time Google insisted on the change, with the first being Chrome 69 back in September.)

Chrome users who don't want "www" or "https://" hidden can also disable a flag (chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains) to revert the address bar to its previous behavior. The Suspicious Site Reporter Extension can do this, too.

"The Chrome team values the simplicity, usability, and security of UI surfaces. To make URLs easier to read and understand, and to remove distractions from the registrable domain, we will hide URL components that are irrelevant to most Chrome users. We plan to hide “https” scheme and special-case subdomain “www” in Chrome omnibox on desktop and Android in M76."

 

[AntiQuark]

I bet this bites their articulates.

 

[Azrak]

Stupid decision.

 

[pek2000]

The whole idea of putting the "https://" was so minimally trained users could look for comething to show that the site that they were conncting to was, in fact, encrypted. And, the "www" is used so that users (once again, minimally trained) go to a specific website. It's a pita to have to set up redirects with a cert and have dns set up to point all non-specific uri's to your root "www" page. All because of some ulterior motive (google never does something without and ulterior motive, the trust is gone from our relationship, google).

 

[Paul_Johnson]

The whole idea of putting the "https://" was so minimally trained users could look for comething to show that the site that they were conncting to was, in fact, encrypted. And, the "www" is used so that users (once again, minimally trained) go to a specific website. It's a pita to have to set up redirects with a cert and have dns set up to point all non-specific uri's to your root "www" page. All because of some ulterior motive (google never does something without and ulterior motive, the trust is gone from our relationship, google).

Yep, the key here is this benefits google and is a detriment to everyone else. That is the only reason for them to do it.

 

[Zarathustra]

My switch back to Firefox is a few months back is seeming more and more like a good idea every day that passes.