• Home
  • Domains
  • Internet & Tech
  • Security & Privacy
  • Google & Search
  • Editorial Praise
  • Contact

Strategic Revenue - Domain and Internet News

Internet news authored by John Colascione

Register Domain Names

  • Isn’t Print Dead?
  • Killer Acquisition
  • New gTLD Death
  • Online Censorship
  • Gullible Domainers
  • You’re A Loser
You are here: Home / Domain Names / Google Chrome, Once Again, Messing with Domain Names In Browser Address Bar

Google Chrome, Once Again, Messing with Domain Names In Browser Address Bar

August 8, 2019 By John Colascione 3 Comments

*** Here Is A List Of Some Of The Best Domain Name Resources Available ***

Register Domain Names

PALM BEACH – Sometimes I just hate Google, and I must admit, those times come a heck of a lot more often these days than they did in the past. I personally used to consider Google an ambiguous friend; always quietly working for me in the background, creating all new interesting ways for me to beat-out the competition. Assigning me that “competitive edge” through working smart and not hard. Allowing experienced know-how to tear through competitors and level the playing field making the average web-guy able to compete with corporate giants.

Now a days, not so much. Google seems to just run over everyone like a Mack-truck on the freeway at eighty-miles-an-hour. They have become experts at gobbling up everything that can for themselves be it content, traffic, revenue – whatever, and doing anything and everything they can possibly do to benefit ‘Google‘ regardless of what or who is in the cross-hairs. This is why they are continually under so much scrutiny these days.

Anyway, a few days ago, Google began removing the “WWW” and “HTTPS” from its Chrome web browser in version Chrome 76 calling the WWW and HTTPS trivial nonsense and just an irrelevant ‘distraction’.

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.

This is at least the second time Chrome has moved to change URLs:

In Sept 2018, we rolled out a change to hide special-case subdomains “www” and “m”. Per my above message on this thread, we rolled back these changes, and announced our intent to re-ship an adjusted version: we will hide “www” but not “m”. For several months, we’ve had this version enabled in our Canary, Dev and Beta channels and are confident that it is ready to be enabled in the Stable channel as well.

I remember when Google was contemplating removing URLs all together [replacing them with a brand] calling them unintelligible strings of gibberish”, replacing web addresses with something a little less complicated.

People have a really hard time understanding URLs,” says Adrienne Porter Felt, Chrome’s engineering manager. “They’re hard to read, it’s hard to know which part of them is supposed to be trusted, and in general I don’t think URLs are working as a good way to convey site identity. So we want to move toward a place where web identity is understandable by everyone—they know who they’re talking to when they’re using a website and they can reason about whether they can trust them. But this will mean big changes in how and when Chrome displays URLs. We want to challenge how URLs should be displayed and question it as we’re figuring out the right way to convey identity.”

Such a change could have looked more like this below:

For whatever reason, I don’t like it. I guess I’m just not used to it. I like to see the “www” and I like to know whether a site is using either https://www, or only https:// without “www” and with this change I can’t easily see it. It does matter for development and using canonical tags for URLs and such. The browser does show it if you double click inside the address bar area, but that is an additional step which is annoying.

Hopefully Microsoft and Firefox won’t follow suit.

If you are not happy with this change, there is a way to reverse it by going into your Chrome settings and turning this function off.

How to show “www” and “https” in Chrome:

  1. Open the Chrome browser and enter into the address bar the following “chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains” and press Enter.
  2. Chrome will open a page that shows a warning “WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES AHEAD! By enabling these features, you could lose browser data or compromise your security or privacy. Enabled features apply to all users of this browser.”
  3.  Look for (its far down so you might want to use find and replace to locate it on the page): “Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Trivial Subdomains”.
  4. Change the setting to “Disabled”.
  5. A message will appear that says, “Your changes will take effect the next time you relaunch Google Chrome.”
  6. Click the “Relaunch Now” button and the browser will restart.

Bingo-Bango, your (or my) favorite little insignificant nonsense URL identifiers are back.

John Colascione 2024
John Colascione

About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Internet Marketing Services Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a ‘how to’ book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy brand Searchen Networks®

Filed Under: Domain Names Tagged With: .google, Chrome, Chrome 76, Competition, Competitive Edge, Distraction, Domain, https, Omnibox, Security, Steady-State, Subdomains, UI, URL, Web Browser, Web Browsers, www

*** Here Is A List Of Some Of The Best Domain Name Resources Available ***

Register Domain Names

Comments

  1. Matt says

    August 11, 2019 at 1:03 pm

    This has already been the case on Chrome mobile.

    Honestly I do like this change. I think it helps the domain industry actually.

    Reply
  2. geoff gonzale says

    August 11, 2019 at 11:47 pm

    John, thanks for the heads up on this change,
    geoffrey

    Reply
  3. domain guy says

    August 13, 2019 at 2:32 pm

    so the only thing that appears in the address bar is the domain name. Nothing else.

    cooking, homes, bedtimestories. seems good…

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search This Site

by: John Colascione

John Colascione

Best Site for Things to Do While Visiting Florida
John Colascione is Chief Executive of Internet Marketing Services Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, authored a book called Mastering Your Website, and is a key player in several Internet businesses through his brand SEARCHEN®

#Indiana.com

GEO domain name

Follow Me

John Colascione Twitter

USED CARS ENTERPRISE

auto buyers market
Auto Buyers Market – Shop Used Cars by Participating Dealers at autobuyersmarket.com

In The News

  • DNJournal: New Book From Veteran Domainer
  • From Brandable to Exact-Match Geo Domain
  • InnovateLI: Two Deals, One Very Interesting Digital
  • Internet Commerce Association: John Colascione
  • NamesCon: Featured Attendee: John Colascione
  • Long Island Media Inc, SmartCEO, Future 50
  • Speakers, Name Summit, John Colascione
  • Speakers, Real Estate Summit, John Colascione
  • 24 Leading Domain Experts Analyze 2017

Popular Stories

New gTLD? Not So Fast; History Suggests New ‘Right of the Dots’ Could = Total Failure

Could Domain Investing Industry End with Legal Provision for Domain “Hoarding”

Websites and Domain Names to Become Insignificant within 20 Years or Less

Does the Domain Industry Suffer From Own Versions of Trumpted “Fake News” Stories?

List of 300+ Cryptocurrency Domain Name Sales and Sale Prices [All Time] (NameBio)

Quotes to Follow

quote icon The domain name is equivalent to Gold. It is the only packaged item which is globally tax-free, portable, with value that is universal across different cultures. quote icon – Frank Schilling

quote icon Domains have and will continue to go up in value faster than any other commodity ever known to man. quote icon – Rick Schwartz

quote icon  Google knows you, your friends, your likes, what entertains you, where you are in the world at any given time. Google will soon predict your next action, your next thought, based on a collaboration of thoughts past. quote icon – John Colascione

Like These Headlines?

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

T.L.D. Brokerage

Domain Brokers

Books on Domain Names

  • Books on Domain Names
  • Best Biz Cash Back Credit Card (5%)

The Evolving Landscape of Search, SEO, and the Role of Domains

WEST PALM BEACH, FL - I’ve been in this industry for nearly 25 years. When I first started, most people hadn’t even heard of Google. Today, Google is the single most influential factor in whether a … [Read More...]

Google’s Search Market Share Dips Below 90% for First Time in Decade

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - Google's global search engine market share fell below 90% in the final quarter of 2024, marking the first time since 2015 that it has dipped under this threshold. Regional … [Read More...]

Near Identical Domain Used To Scam Over $800,000 With Wire For Real Estate Deal

AUSTRALIA - A South Australian woman narrowly avoided a complete financial disaster after falling victim to a sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) scam that led to the loss of over $800,000. … [Read More...]

Domaining blog recommended by Domaining.com

Copyright © 2010-2025 StrategicRevenue.com - Property of Internet Marketing Services Inc.   FeedBurner: RSS
By using this site you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please exit the service.