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Google Slammed Over Chrome Change That Strips 'www' From Domain URLs (itwire.com) 240

An anonymous reader quotes ITWire: Google's move to strip out the www in domains typed into the address bar, beginning with version 69 of its Chrome browser, has drawn an enormous amount of criticism from developers who see the move as a bid to cement the company's dominance of the Web. The criticism comes a few days after Chrome's engineering manager Adrienne Porter Felt told the American website Wired that URLs need to be got rid of altogether. The change in Chrome version 69 means that if one types in a domain such as www.itwire.com into the browser search bar, the www portion is stripped out in the address bar when the page is displayed.

When asked about this change in a long discussion thread on a mailing list, a Google staffer wrote: "www is now considered a 'trivial' subdomain, and hiding trivial subdomains can be disabled in flags (will also disable hiding the URL scheme)..." A Google staffer attempted to justify the change, writing: "The subdomains reappear when editing the URL so people type the correct one. They disappear in the steady-state display case because this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases..." But this drew an angry response from a poster who questioned the statement "this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases" and asked: "According to who? This is simply an opinion stated as a fact...."

This is not the first time Google has been criticised for its moves to change the fundamental structure of URLs. Its Accelerated Mobile Pages, introduced in October 2015, have been criticised for obscuring the original URL of a page and reducing the chances of a reader going back to the original website. Probably for this reason, Apple last year decided that version 11 of iOS would update its Safari browser so that AMP links would be stripped out of an URL when the story was shared... "This is Google making subdomain usage decisions for other entities outside of Google," said yet another poster. "My domains and how subdomains are assigned and delegated are not Google's business to decide."

The controversy moved Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein to write a new blog post. Its title? "Here's How to Disable Google Chrome's Confusing New URL Hiding Scheme."

UPDATE (9/15/18): Google has announced that after public outcry, they'll return the 'www' to Chrome's URL's -- but only until the next release.
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Google Slammed Over Chrome Change That Strips 'www' From Domain URLs

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  • Google is evil (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:44AM (#57275456)

    Add this to the arbitrary scare tactics for http pages... and the AMP debacle...

    if you haven't figured it out yet, Google is evil. Period.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      While they're at it, let them bring back the titlebar. I want to see page titles and have a larger target for the mouse when moving the window. I find myself tearing off browser tabs to separate windows far more often than I want.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Google is blatantly trolling. 69 involves stripping! Who'da thunk?

  • I don't see what all the fuss is about. The www is rarely important, and when it is it's because I've clicked on the url to change it. This just seems like a smart (but very minor) step for usability.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Without disabling this feature, it's not apparent if I'm at www.domainname.tld or domainname.tld which may be different pages.

    • by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:14PM (#57275616)

      Why is it up to Google to decide which details we should concern ourselves with?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

        Why is it up to Google to decide which details we should concern ourselves with?

        It's not, but they want dumber, less informed users that can be more easily manipulated by *them*. They do this sort of stuff under the guise of helping users to not be manipulated by others. I'd rather have users that understand URLs and how things actually work.

        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Other than the 'amp' theory, I just don't see *how* this goes towards the end of helping people or manipulating people. It just feels senseless.

          With the 'amp' theory, I don't see why they would need to 'ease in', they already treat amp differently than other things and already muddy the waters and don't make it obvious to users what's going on, so I don't see how this is a step toward further masking amp...

      • by pots ( 5047349 )
        Because they're the ones who make Chrome. I don't understand this question, every aspect of the Chrome UI is up to Google.
    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:22PM (#57275670)
      www.domain.com and domain.com actually have different entries on the DNS records and can resolve to different servers. Most companies have set it up so the former redirects to the latter (or vice versa), but for the ones that haven't, obfuscating www.domain.com can lead to people typing in just domain.com when you have a www.domain.com server specifically set up to handle http requests (the regular domain.com handling other tasks like ftp, ssh, etc). Your domain.com server then has to handle the http request, and send a redirect message to the browser to go to www.domain.com instead. Basically it unnecessarily puts additional load onto your main server when you've set up a separate web server specifically to avoid that unnecessary load, and causes the client browser to take a fraction of a second longer to get to the real site.

      If this change had been the other way around (automatically pre-pending www to domain.com) I wouldn't see a problem with it (aside from inconveniencing a few domain owners who've haven't correctly set up their www.domain.com NS entry into setting it up correctly). But stripping out the www creates unnecessary server load, wastes a tiny bit of time for the person browsing, confuses domain owners trying to troubleshoot what's actually going on, and has no tangible benefit other than "decluttering" the URL bar by 3 characters. From a troubleshooting standpoint, I'd rate this change almost as bad as ISPs who redirect domain typos to an advertising page, instead of an error page.
      • by arth1 ( 260657 )

        Indeed. One of the main reasons for admins naming the web domain names www. was to reduce unnecessary traffic and load on machines resolving to the domain name itself. Users being taught to not enter www. defeats this purpose.

        Another reason was to identify the purpose of the DNS entry in a non-URL context. There's seldom any confusion about what www.foobar.invalid and news.foobar.invalid DNS entries point to.

        • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          Hey! Nice, I didn't remember about .invalid

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Users stopped entering the www. long ago. Any web site operator already needs to work on the assumption that many won't.

          • by arth1 ( 260657 )

            Users stopped entering the www. long ago. Any web site operator already needs to work on the assumption that many won't.

            There's a difference between supporting it and encouraging it.
            If a million users go directly to www.sitename.invalid instead of sitename.invalid, causing a redirect or proxy operation, that's a win, even if another million go to sitename.invalid.
            What Google does here is encouraging the wasteful behavior.

      • They're not changing the actual URL, only HIDING the www part.

        And if your site depends on www being there to get the content the user expected, you're doing it wrong!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      I think the issue is it seems pointless to do ('www.' and especially 'm.' doesn't make urls magically harder). There's no real benefit and in a way it's patronizing to people to think they would be confused by the presence/absence of 4 characters.

      On the flip side, messing with the display of urls can cause confusion. If a site doesn't have a 'mydomain.tld' and just has 'www.mydomain.tld', then someone verbally directing based on what they see in their browser would potentially be confused. Admittedly thi

      • by pots ( 5047349 )
        The www vs. m distinction is a good point. If I get shunted to some mobile page, that is something that I would like to be able to see at a glance without clicking on the url bar.
        • by green1 ( 322787 )

          You already can. The mobile pages are obvious because they are completely crippled and missing any form of usability or information. If you end up on one and can't tell, is because the full site is also completely useless, and you might as well just stop visiting there.

  • by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:46AM (#57275478)
    This honestly sounds like change for the sake of change. I think too many corporations do this and to many managers do this to justify their salaries. Leave it alone! How about working to make Chrome more secure? If you're going to do something, do something productive and meaningful.
    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      There is a problem here - normal users don't understand how URLs work and many malicious sites continually attempt to trick them into believing they're on a site they're not.
      • by nwf ( 25607 )

        There is a problem here - normal users don't understand how URLs work and many malicious sites continually attempt to trick them into believing they're on a site they're not.

        True, and this change helps how?

      • by LocalH ( 28506 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:59AM (#57275548) Homepage

        This doesn't even really help with that, however. It's apparently not even been fully tested, as such "trivial" domains are stripped even when they're not in the canonical position within the URL. I read that someone tested a convoluted example of www.example.www.example.com being stripped to example.example.com which is just completely incorrect in every way.

    • I think the reasoning behind the change goes like this: A user visits a website via a link. They enjoy the website, so they look at the address bar and remember the website name. When they later type the website into they address bar, they will leave off the 'www', which will trigger a Google search instead of loading the website directly.
    • by qubezz ( 520511 )
      When someone later types the wrong thing, then they are as likely to be directed to a Google search with ads by the URL area being a search bar also as they are to get to a webmaster redirect.
      Next on the chopping block - bookmarks.
  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:47AM (#57275484) Homepage Journal

    But it doesn't mean you can just ignore it. In the URL syntax that part of the URL identifies the host and possibly a user id and port. You can't automatically *know* that "www.somedomain.net" refers to a different host than "somedomain.net", and even if it did the host would not necessarily be configured to return the same information to an HTTP GET.

    • Sort of like ISPs "stealing" error codes (which are correct responses from servers) and presenting their own meaningless, but monetized, pages instead. The Internet works the way it works, trying to "customize" it for corporate convenience are breaking changes.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:22PM (#57275676)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Since when does "antiquated" equal "invalid"? That's kind of my point: it's still valid, even if the reasons people started using it (e.g. to distinguish your likely only web host in a subdomain from hosts running other services like gopher) don't really apply these days.

        Of course "www" was always a pretty awkward thing. It's the only abbreviation I know that has three times as many syllables as words it replaces.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, we already have ports to separate out different services. Even back in the 90s it was common for ftp.domain.com to offer up a web page if you connected on port 80.

        To be honest I don't really understand why they are doing this either. I get that URLs are confusing for most people and often misleading too, but all of that has little to do with the WWW part.

        • Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, we already have ports to separate out different services.

          Just give users queue cards then when they need to access services.

          But the point of these was not to split services but to split servers. ftp.domain.com serving up a different website on port 80? That means going to ftp://domain.com/ [domain.com] will not give you the content you were hoping for.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Sure, but these days www.domain.com is probably a cache in front of a bunch of virtual servers on a CDN somewhere.

            • Sure, but these days www.domain.com is probably a cache in front of a bunch of virtual servers on a CDN somewhere.

              A practice which makes differentiating the sub domain all the more important.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        I'll admit up front I don't know exactly how DNS records works, but I think if you're copying the protocol into the domain name simply to get a one-to-one mapping it's not logically correct. If go to ftp://example.com [example.com] I want example.com's ftp server. If I go to http://example.com/ [example.com] I want example.com's web server. I should not have to go to ftp://ftp.google.com [google.com] and http://www.example.com/ [example.com] that would have to be because of technical design limitations. I believe you also get google.com's email servers, like yo

        • The point is not where *you* want to go, but rather where the network administrators want you to go. DNS entries allow these to point to different servers and with good reason.

          In my own case domain.com redirects to www.domain.com. However www.domain.com is not the host of any content, it's a front end transparent proxy to another server on the network. If I want to access this data: ftp://www.domain.com [domain.com] would put me in the wrong place which is why my dns entry for ftp://ftp.domain.com [domain.com] has a different IP add

        • Unfortunately the only service actually accounted for in DNS is mail, you associate MX records with A entries to determine where mail sent to a hostname is delivered. That's why you can email user@example.com but you have to ftp to ftp.example.com. most companies point their tld directly to the web server so that you don't have to type www, but unless the same server (or load balancer or cluster or what have you) also is the ftp server, they will need different hostnames.

      • They're not changing the actual URL, only HIDING the www part. It's still there for your links and copy/paste.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah, I think part of the reason this is happening is that most people don't understand URLs. The different parts seem meaningless and arbitrary, and so they might imagine that they can be omitted without consequence. For example, that part that says, "http://"? It's meaningless and ugly and it's always "http://", so why not just leave it out? And why have the "www." as the beginning part of the name when all websites start with "www." and you could just leave it off?

      But that's not true. The "http://"

  • No. Just, No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:47AM (#57275488)

    You don't get to decide how other people structure their resources.

    And if we're at that point, maybe something drastically needs to change. Civil and criminal liability for damages resulting from altered resource locators that fraudulently misrepresent the resource being served?

    • Good grief. Of course you didn't read the article. They're not changing the actual URL, only HIDING the www part. It's still there for your links and copy/paste.

  • by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:05PM (#57275564)
    ... said yet another poster. "My domains and how subdomains are assigned and delegated are not Google's business to decide."
  • by sursurrus ( 796632 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:05PM (#57275572)

    Steve Jobs famously referred to Google as "That Montessouri School in Mountain View." He was right. In recent times their culture has gotten so autistic that when they're replaced with AI it will cause a noticeable improvement in the humanity of Google as a whole. They, along with the social media platforms are basically bright kids playing with dynamite.

    • their culture has gotten so autistic

      Thank you for implying that all people with autism are the same. My respect for you has increased.

  • by jader3rd ( 2222716 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:11PM (#57275592)
    If you're really upset about it, put a little banner on your website that mentions that your site doesn't work properly with Chrome and that the user should pick a different browser.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I think this post is trying to blow up the controversy here.

    Google is *not* altering URLs, they just changed what the browser displays by default. It doesn't display the URL, it displays the domain (and in some trivial cases, only some of the domain).
    You can agree with that or not, but all this "change the fundamental structure of URLs" is just someone blowing smoke.

    It's not all sub-domains that are hidden, only particularly useless ("trivial") sub-domains. If your server really does give different response

    • by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to see complete tracert info in my URL bar for every webpage.
    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:42PM (#57275740)

      1) WTF were you thinking...

      Perhaps you also think that Google shouldn't display the top level domain as well? By this logic, the top level domain is also a "trivial" part of the URL. There is clearly no discernible difference between whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com, right? There should be no problem, also, if Chrome shows just, "whitehouse" in the URL, because users will figure that out.

      2) do you really think your *users* will be able to figure that out?

      I find your second point to be doubly humorous (in a troublesome sort of way) after responding to your first point.

      Browsers should not be screwing with what is displayed in the address bar. It is the browser's responsibility to faithfully display the actual contents of the address bar, not to impose its own dogma on it. I don't know if Google is trolling or not; but the whole concept of removing ANY information from the address bar is monumentally stupid, and reeks of Microsoft in the 90's.

      • and reeks of Microsoft in the 90's.

        Just what are you saying? Microsoft missed the internet way back when, WE didn't. It's our Internet, we just let you play in it.

        -- Google.

      • Perhaps you also think that Google shouldn't display the top level domain as well? By this logic, the top level domain is also a "trivial" part of the URL. There is clearly no discernible difference between whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com, right? There should be no problem, also, if Chrome shows just, "whitehouse" in the URL, because users will figure that out.

        I actually think this is the end-game for Google. The URL bar will just show 'whitehouse', and it will represent the Google search term you should

    • They are there if you want to look at them, edit them, or copy them, no change there, they are just not displayed in their full gory detail all the time.

      No they are not regardless of what the summary says. Editing them and copying them are broken in the current release and the next beta.

      If your server really does give different responses for `foobar.com` and `www.foobar.com`, then 1) WTF were you thinking, and 2) do you really think your *users* will be able to figure that out?

      Yes, because we use redirectors to get people to the right server if they type the wrong one. I'm not sure about you, but I prefer the wrong server not to suddenly have to deal with a huge extra load because Google does a stupid.

      If the URL is necessary for your users to navigate your site, please learn to design web sites.

      How did you get here? Floated in on the wind? I bet you typed the www in front of slashdot.org too. Or maybe someone copied and pasted the link to

  • remove the URL bar (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:16PM (#57275632) Homepage Journal

    Just force us to use Google search for everything.

    Also, I hope someone brings back AOL keywords. I love these walled gardens.

  • by rainer_d ( 115765 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:17PM (#57275644) Homepage

    When I go to my employer's homepage (that certainly does not do any redirects), it also only displays the portion of the URL without "www".

  • Stupid (Score:5, Informative)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:20PM (#57275662) Homepage

    Did someone at Google suddenly forget, it is entirely possible for 'mydomain.com' to yield a different page than 'www.mydomain.com'?

    It's not common, but it's doable and some people might do this. This change makes no sense to me.

    • the web is being broken by these ill thought out changes.

      type taxationweb.co.uk into a browser and it will work. try it again and it will fail.

      At least currently you will see that you actually visited https://www.taxationweb.co.uk/ [taxationweb.co.uk]

      In the future you will have no idea what is going on.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      I tried entering www.slashdot.org and ended up at some strange site with endlessly repeating stories.

    • Good grief. They're not changing the actual URL, only HIDING the www part. It's still there for your links and copy/paste.

  • Also.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:24PM (#57275682) Homepage

    It seems to strip the 'http://' and 'https://' COME ON GOOGLE, I've been teaching users for YEARS to watch their URL box and be wary of they don't see HTTPS. Goddamn Google you are stupid.

  • Their fall is imminent. They have the same delusions that befell Microsoft and others who thought they were "it"

  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:56PM (#57275820)

    The www. nonsense is a leftover from an ancient time and should be eliminated
    Until it is eliminated, it should be displayed
    Browsers should display full and accurate URLs
    The same thing goes for file browsers. Hiding extensions is wrong, and increases confusion

    • The www. nonsense is a leftover from an ancient time and should be eliminated

      Indeed, I believe its first appearance was in Book IX of Josephus’ Antiquities.

    • by Teun ( 17872 )

      The same thing goes for file browsers. Hiding extensions is wrong, and increases confusion

      Indeed, the worst is MS made it a default to hide extensions and many companies IT dept. can't be bothered to switch it back on through their group policies.
      This is just another way to get viruses installed by dumb users.

      • Users - regular users, the type the business hires to actually do the things that make money - no longer know what a file extension is. They know there are word files, and image files, and sound files. That's all. If extensions appeared, they would be confused, then learn to ignore them. Then they'd start renaming files in the course of their work, delete the silly bit at the end of the name, and start bothering the IT dept with support calls of 'my word is corrupt please help.'

    • You mean, an ancient time when different internet services were hosted on different subdomains? Like mail.domain.com or ftp.domain.com? Seems this is still going on all over the Internet. There is, after all, more to the Internet than just the Web!

  • I will totally loathe and detest this change forever and curse it to /dev/null if...

    1. It messes up automated tools such as Selenium - if sites can't be tested, things get unsafe.

    2. It impacts the ability of users to share URLs by visual inspection .

    3. It impacts the ability of users to determine if they're secure.

    4. It allows a browser hijacker to conceal what site someone is on by editing what is displayed.

    5. It creates a security hole through improper string handling.

    6. The extra complexity contains code

    • I agree with you on 2 and am pretty sure 4 is true since someone previous posted an example of www.example.www.example.com being stripped to example.example.com instead of example.www.example.com. I hope how it is displayed does not affect how the URL is actually used so I hope 1, 5, and 6 are not true.

      I don't believe 3 will be an issue due to the changes they've been making in how they indicate secure connections. They got rid of the "Secure" text on https sites and just display the padlock but they explic

      • by jd ( 1658 )

        So would I be correct in thinking that www.example.com and example.www.com would show up identically? That would be a problem, as example.com and www.com are totally different organizations, not just different parts of the same.

  • In Finland, there is this silly custom where www.somedomain.fi will get you what you want, but somedomain.fi will not. These are the minority, definitely,. but there are quite a lot of them.

    Hopefully the good Google software engineers have anticipated this and will automatically look up the www.someting version of any given site.

  • by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:30PM (#57275972)
    Chrome also provides an "Enterprise" MSI, I'm wondering if they will enable / force this too. In my job, I NEED the FULL URL displayed. One of my functions is to ensure the PKI certificates all work properly, I have to make certs for a vast amount of different devices, the last thing I need is LESS information. We will just have to use a GPO to stop Google from updating, even though this goes against the DoD STIG of keeping all software updated.

    Hey Google, is it possible to disable this flag in a GPO, using the provided ADMX files? Is this available in the HKLM\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome\ registry subtree? I'm surprised this "trivial" setting isn't already in V1R12 of the DISA STIG...
  • by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:45PM (#57276056)
    Looks like Google has already closed the discussion on this OUT, within 48 hours. They merged several other threads of people complaining about this into this thread, there are other various issues people reported; but it seems like Google just doesn't care. This also strips out "www" anywhere in the URL, so "https://sub.www.example.com" is changed to just showing "sub.example.com".
    • To quote a Chrome developer from long ago: "This is not a democracy."

      And, lol, it wouldn't shock me if they used a simple string replacement instead of a regex to eliminate the "www". That's not incompetence. It really is just not giving a shit.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There are, in fact, cases where the "www" is necessary to make a site work. For example, a main domain controlled by a different company than the "www" and without a redirect or using a different site alltogether. Hiding the "www" is just going to make matters worse in the long run. If a user is telling someone a URL and they DID have to use "www" to get there and yet read it off a screen that hides the "www", it will cause problems.

    Google, STOP trying to hide and "simplify" everything- not everything in

  • The criticism comes a few days after Chrome's engineering manager Adrienne Porter Felt told the American website Wired that URLs need to be got rid of altogether.

    That would mark the final transition of the desktop to "apps" ...

    'course, you'll need a way to organize your "apps". Maybe we could come up with some sort of naming scheme ...

  • ...likely don't understand URLs *at* *all* anyway.

    A browser disregarding web standards is a sure way to lose a large chunk of its user base. Of course, that's fine with me, I'd love to see more people using Firefox.

  • "Some men set themselves up as an example to others. I set myself up as a warning."

    - attributed to Mark Twain
  • Here's how you can get it back at least for now:

    Open: chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains and set it to "Disabled".

  • I absolutely hate it when the www. is required. It's just lazy SysAdmin of the web server. The WWW is completely unnecessary. Must allow for other sub-domains however.

  • www.domain.com is not the same as domain.com in DNS. They both could be configured the same, but often they often deliberately resolve to a different destination. Chrome is effectively eliminating the ability of domain owners to utilize the www. subdomain as the owner sees fit. This will most likely force those who use the www subdomain today to begin using another designation for their webservers. One would hope that the replacement would become as widely recognized as www someday but I think that is u
  • I see "little Microsoft" are at it again. Using their browser dominance to decide things for us that we didn't ask them to decide. It takes me back to the days when IE decided we didn't need to see webserver error messages.

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