Google does not take its finger off the topic of removing URLs in the Chrome address bar

Google for several years now, has expressed its disagreement with URLs and how they are shown in the address bar, this nonconformity it has gotten to such a degree that basically Google has declared a war on URLs in the address bar.

This has led Chrome developers to implement different measures to remove the URL that is shown in the address bar and there are various changes that have been shown in this regard in various versions of Chrome, but in the end, Google had to roll back the changes for x and y reason, unable to achieve its mission.

In early 2014, Google seemed to want to make a change in the behavior of your Omnibox, the address bar that can be used both to search the web (the default search engine is configurable) and to enter a URL.

In the Chrome Canary build 36 version, it was possible to activate an option to hide the full URL of a visited site. When the Internet user navigated through the different sections of a site, only the name of the site was displayed in the address bar.

One of the objectives behind this maneuver feu provide a bulwark against phishing attacks, a technique used by scammers to obtain personal information in order to perpetrate identity theft.

One of the keys to the success of their attacks lies in persuading their victim to go to a trusted site to sneak in their personal information (credit card number, date of birth, nickname, etc ...). With extended URLs, the browser can mislead the Internet user and thus facilitate phishing attempts by malicious sites.

But several people did not stop making their voices heard on the subject. The opinions were quite varied, even within the Chrome team. For example, Paul Irish said

“I imagine this will help defend against phishing” before adding “my personal opinion is that this is a very bad change that is the antithesis of Chrome's goals. «

While Jake Archibald, a Chrome developer, supported the feature:

“Find someone who's not in the tech field, show them their bank's site, and ask them what the URL tells you. My experience teaches me that most users do not know which parts of the URL are security tokens. "

Despite that, negative comments were more and willingly, Google shelved your project, especially after the protests this provoked, in addition to the discovery of weaknesses in the "Origin Chip" function by PhishMe, a company specializing in phishing testing programs, after only a few tests.

However, a few years later, in 2020, the company made a strong comeback with its project. Some feature flags have appeared in Chrome 85's Dev and Canary channels, changing the appearance and behavior of web addresses in the address bar. The main indicator is called "Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Path, Query and Ref", which hides everything in the current web address except the domain name.

With this, the Chrome team is not afraid to exploit existing web standards and has publicly stated that they want to remove the URL.

Today Chrome only hides "https: //" at the beginning of the URL, but it can be disabled on desktop computers by right-clicking on the address bar and checking "always show full URLs".

In addition to that within the discussion forums Chromium bugs are still being discussed various questions about «Omnibox», where we can find those who support the project, as well as those who believe that it has no future and it is better to leave «Omnibox» in the archive and not dust it again.

Finally If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link.