Google abandons plans to hide full URL in Chrome

For more than a year now, Google has been fighting to simplify the URL bar in Chrome, first hiding the http/https part of the URL, and then hiding the full URL, and only showing the domain name.

With many malicious sites using specially crafted URLs to trick users into believing they are visiting a real rather than fake site, Google wanted to hide the full URL in the address bar in favour of showing just the domain name and an indicator if a site is Secure or Not Secure.

Google however received a lot of pushback, meaning last year they added the option to show the full URL if you prefer.

This week however Google has given up the fight completely, saying the plan did not have a significant effect on reducing visits to fraudulent sites.

On the Chromium Gerrit Google engineer Emily Stark wrote:

Delete simplified domain experiment

This experiment didn’t move relevant security metrics, so we’re not going to launch it. 🙁

Future builds will now show the full URL, though the HTTPS:// protocol section will still be hidden, though this can now be unhidden with the Show full URL right-click menu option.

via GHacks