Chrome abandons 'simplified domain experiment' in omnibar

&quot;simplified domain&quot; = address bar only shows domain name.<p>e.g. &quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;google-to-test-simplified-domain-display-in-chrome&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;google-to-test-simplified-...</a>&quot; -&gt; &quot;ghacks.net&quot;<p>&gt; The reason for running the experiment, according to a developer, is that the display of the full URL makes it difficult for the average user to distinguish between legitimate and malicious sites.<p>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;google-to-test-simplified-domain-display-in-chrome&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;google-to-test-simplified-...</a>

Kudos to Emily Stark for letting the real data guide her decision. It&#x27;s hard to let go of something you&#x27;ve invested a lot of effort in, and it seems like this was something she had strong feelings about. Doing the right thing even when it&#x27;s not what you were hoping for deserves to be applauded.

&gt;Showing only the domain name was considered a good way to remove the extra chaff from a complex URL and only leave the core domain visible in the URL bar.<p>&gt;showing full URLs makes it harder for non-technical users to distinguish between legitimate and malicious (phishing) sites, many of which use complicated and long URLs in attempts to confuse users<p>Why not simply make the domain name visually stand out from the rest of the url?

At least Chrome let you right click the URL field and choose to view full URLs. Firefox has also started messing with the way URLs are displayed and you have to trawl through the about:config settings to stop the insanity.

Why did everybody lose their minds over this? It seems Safari does this without much drama.

Kudos to Emily Stark for letting the real data guide her decision. It&#x27;s hard to let go of something you&#x27;ve invested a lot of effort in, and it seems like this was something she had strong feelings about.<p>Doing the right thing even when it&#x27;s not what you were hoping for deserves to be applauded.

&gt; This experiment didn&#x27;t move relevant security metrics, so we&#x27;re not going to launch it. :(<p>Interesting, I wonder what exact &#x27;security metric&#x27; they were measuring this against to determine if this feature would make the cut.

This is the same bad idea as hiding file extensions.

I&#x27;m all for making phishing less effective, but this was just bad UX.

the design issues of URLs are IMO less technical and much more SEO induced. Google has a lot to say here.<p>E.g. URL length over 80 chars (https included) should be a penalty to search rank. So should parameters. Also everything impacting read- and spellability. URLs have to be designed on their own right. Remember Aaron Swartz&#x27;s &#x27;Programmable Web&#x27; opening chapter &#x27;Building for Users: Designing URLs&#x27;.<p>Design had just no stake here while advertising had. Then happened what happens when candy champions bread.<p>The technicalities have to be commonplace and must not be hidden – like the wheels of a vehicle. You may not directly interact with them but you must be aware they&#x27;re what it&#x27;s all about.

Why not instead apply syntax highlighting to the URL?

Isn&#x27;t this implemented on Safari for some time now?

What do they mean by &quot;we&#x27;re not going to launch it&quot;? Doesn&#x27;t Chrome already hide the URL scheme and www subdomain?

I could also live without hiding the protocol for non-secured websites. I mean leave the label there, I don&#x27;t care, but whenever I want to copy the domain of a HTTP website, it also automatically prepends it with the protocol, which more often than not is not what I want.<p>I wish developers just stop experimenting on URL bars and leave them simple and consistent...

It&#x27;s such a weird thing to change in the first place, who benefits from it??<p>Lots of negatives and not really any positives I can think of.

Always wondered when this, removing the path after the domain, would be put in. It&#x27;s visually simpler and would probably improve the metrics recording perceived sleekness of user experience.<p>But removing the path would be a burden to those discovering how the web really works.

This felt like phase two of putting everything under the AMP umbrella, and I would not be shocked if Google shut this down out of fear of regulatory scrutiny.<p>Google <i>really wants</i> to kill the URL. If you have to navigate through Chrome and their search engine to get to things, they&#x27;ll have sunk their claws deep enough that the web doesn&#x27;t even matter anymore.<p>They want to serve and proxy all the content so they can inject more ads and tracking.<p>The EU and US DOJ should really be asking themselves whether or not the world&#x27;s biggest search engine and advertising company should be allowed to develop the world&#x27;s most popular browser. Maybe Google should be told to stop development of Chrome.

Thank God

Good, now Safari next, please.

Sweet Jesus thank you. Whomever thought this was a good idea needs to have their hands removed from any production database. There has got to be a better way to help people realize they&#x27;re on the right domain than removing information for everyone.<p>This reeks of mobile browser features creeping into desktop software. The use cases are entirely different. And the form informs the function -- you can&#x27;t usually display a full URL on a mobile browser -- that is why you don&#x27;t see it on mobile browsers.

Good lord this one guys&#x27;s mess up address bar OKR pursuit finally stops.

Google stops malicious blablabla... due to a public outrage and temporarily, until most will forget about it.

Oh well, was worth a shot.

Ah sense prevails for once

Oh thank God, this was so irritating. At least it didn&#x27;t last long.

Anyone what the &quot;security metrics&quot; they referenced in the commit message were that they thought would be impacted by making this unrequested change to how the web works?