Google Chrome ends its war on address bar URLs—for now, at least

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  The new experiment: after loading a page, Chrome shows only the domain name. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Chrome is ending its war on address bar URLs—at least for now. About a year ago, Chrome started experimenting with stripping down the URL shown in the address bar to only the domain name, so instead of something like “https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/google-is-messing-with-the-address-bar-again-new-experiment-hides-url-path/,” the address bar would show only “arstechnica.com,” and you would have no idea where you are in the site directory.

Android Police spotted a post on the Chromium bug tracker announcing that Google is killing the idea. Back in June 2020 when the experiment was kicking off, Google engineer Emily Stark explained that the company was experimenting with a simplified URL display “to understand if it helps users identify malicious websites more accurately.” It’s a year later, and now Stark writes that the “simplified domain experiment” will be deleted from the codebase, saying, “This experiment didn’t move relevant security metrics, so we’re not going to launch it. :(“

Apple’s Safari browser also hides URLs like this.