Last week Google was spotted experimenting with a new change in Chrome Canary 85 and Chrome Dev version. The change hides the complete address of the current webpage. It only displays the website domain at all times, e.g. opening this page ‘digitalinformationworld.com/2020/06/how-does-facebook-use-machine-learning-to-deliver-ads.html’ will result this in the address bar ‘digitalinformationworld.com’. The company had to face backlash for this new experiment. Now, Google has revealed extra details related to the company’s plans and how Google plans to address this criticism.
The company has experimented to hide the complete URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the address bar of Chrome Dev for years. Google has been testing this change because long web address appears to be evil and scary, in some cases. However, despite the public backlash, the company is pressing on with its new plans to hide the full web address except for the domain name of the web address.
A chromium developer on the bug tracker forum for this new change stated that the company thinks that it is a crucial problem area to explore as phishing, as well as other sorts of social engineering, are rampant on the web. He also stated that a lot of research indicates that the current URL display patterns of the browser are not efficient defenses. Google is introducing and implementing this new simplified display pattern to conduct quantitative as well as qualitative research to understand if this new experiment helps Chrome users to identify malicious sites more properly and accurately.
The comment from the chromium developer also mentioned a paper that was published last year. The paper evaluated how users perceive the identities of different sites, and discovered that no iteration of URL display patterns and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) notices significantly affected the understanding of users on the safety and identification of login pages.
Google also confirmed that the company will keep the existing opt-out mechanism. The opt-out mechanism is a setting option that allows users to view the full URLs. When a user right-clicks on the address bar of Chrome, they see an option that says, ‘Always show full URLs.’ With this option, you will be able to always view the complete URLs in the address bar. The chromium developer also stated that the company plans to support this opt-out mechanism for an unlimited time. This means that users will be able to use this option for an unspecified period of time. We are not yet sure when the company will officially implement this new change. However, it seems that Google will implement this change despite the public backlash that comes after every attempt.
Read next: Google Chrome is bringing a new autofill bar user interface for Android to provide a far greater user experience
The company has experimented to hide the complete URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the address bar of Chrome Dev for years. Google has been testing this change because long web address appears to be evil and scary, in some cases. However, despite the public backlash, the company is pressing on with its new plans to hide the full web address except for the domain name of the web address.
A chromium developer on the bug tracker forum for this new change stated that the company thinks that it is a crucial problem area to explore as phishing, as well as other sorts of social engineering, are rampant on the web. He also stated that a lot of research indicates that the current URL display patterns of the browser are not efficient defenses. Google is introducing and implementing this new simplified display pattern to conduct quantitative as well as qualitative research to understand if this new experiment helps Chrome users to identify malicious sites more properly and accurately.
The comment from the chromium developer also mentioned a paper that was published last year. The paper evaluated how users perceive the identities of different sites, and discovered that no iteration of URL display patterns and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) notices significantly affected the understanding of users on the safety and identification of login pages.
Google also confirmed that the company will keep the existing opt-out mechanism. The opt-out mechanism is a setting option that allows users to view the full URLs. When a user right-clicks on the address bar of Chrome, they see an option that says, ‘Always show full URLs.’ With this option, you will be able to always view the complete URLs in the address bar. The chromium developer also stated that the company plans to support this opt-out mechanism for an unlimited time. This means that users will be able to use this option for an unspecified period of time. We are not yet sure when the company will officially implement this new change. However, it seems that Google will implement this change despite the public backlash that comes after every attempt.
Read next: Google Chrome is bringing a new autofill bar user interface for Android to provide a far greater user experience
