For the past three years or so, Google has been working on a project behind the scenes with the goal to hide full URLs in the address bar. Now, Google

Google Chrome no longer plans to hide full URLs because it doesn’t help security after all

submited by

Style Pass

2021-06-12 12:00:11

For the past three years or so, Google has been working on a project behind the scenes with the goal to hide full URLs in the address bar. Now, Google is pulling the plug on its Chrome experiment and will not hide URLs.

Google’s experiments with hiding the URL bar have gone through a few iterations, but the biggest move came in Chrome 86 where Google actively hid the full URL in the omnibox. So, in the example shared by Android Police at the time and pictured above, a Wikipedia page would show the “en.wikipedia.org” but would hide the rest of the URL until you clicked on it.

That behavior stuck around in Canary and other builds for a while, but never made it to stable builds as criticism from users continued. Google’s goal for the change was to make it easier for users to see malicious URLs. Google explained:

We’re implementing this simplified domain display experiment so that we can conduct qualitative and quantitative research to understand if it helps users identify malicious websites more accurately.