Google Chrome Will Now Detect Typos in Your URLs (blog.google) 47
"Google Chrome will now check for typos in your URLs and display suggested websites based on what it thinks you meant," reports the Verge.
From Google's announcement: When you type a website into the Chrome address bar, it will now detect URL typos and suggest websites based on the corrections. This increases accessibility for people with dyslexia, language learners, and anyone who makes typos by making it easier to get to previously visited websites despite spelling errors. This feature is now available on Chrome desktop and will roll out to mobile in the coming months.
It was one of several new and recently launched features Google touted as part of Thursday's Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Google also announced its Lookout app (which provides audio cues for low-vision users) can now provide descriptions of images on web pages "powered by an advanced visual language model developed by Google DeepMind." And Chrome on Android recently updated its TalkBack screen reader so tab switching now also offers a tab grid with additional features like tab groups, bulk tab actions and reordering.
From Google's announcement: When you type a website into the Chrome address bar, it will now detect URL typos and suggest websites based on the corrections. This increases accessibility for people with dyslexia, language learners, and anyone who makes typos by making it easier to get to previously visited websites despite spelling errors. This feature is now available on Chrome desktop and will roll out to mobile in the coming months.
It was one of several new and recently launched features Google touted as part of Thursday's Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Google also announced its Lookout app (which provides audio cues for low-vision users) can now provide descriptions of images on web pages "powered by an advanced visual language model developed by Google DeepMind." And Chrome on Android recently updated its TalkBack screen reader so tab switching now also offers a tab grid with additional features like tab groups, bulk tab actions and reordering.
How do I turn it off? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like that middle-click-wildly-scroll-anywhere-but-where-I-wanted-to-go "feature", what that most needs is a way to turn it off.
But google makes too much money and is too profitable to give you anything useful or meaningful choice.
Re:How do I turn it off? (Score:5, Informative)
chrome://flags -> omnibox-fuzzy-url-suggestions -> Disabled.
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Until they decide to remove the flag, as they are wont to do,
Re:How do I turn it off? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is deeply in its enshittification phase. Pretty much anything they roll out, the first and only question everyone is is how to turn it off.
Re: (Score:1)
There is a whole book about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] The premise is that any change regardless of purpose or impact is seen as negative by people. You could add a button that magically cures cancer and some idiots will complain and ask how to turn it off. That's just the way things are with any product or service that is widely used an undergoing development.
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Just like that middle-click-wildly-scroll-anywhere-but-where-I-wanted-to-go "feature", what that most needs is a way to turn it off.
+1 exactly what I was thinking, I have domains only I use and their guessing is always wrong whenever I try to enter them in the URL bar...
Re:How do I turn it off? (Score:4, Funny)
wildly-scroll
Have you considered using your mouse with finesse rather than jerking it like a 15 year old who just discovered pornhub?
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Switch to Firefox.
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Re: How do I turn it off? (Score:2)
Use Firefox
Fail (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope it's not like autocorrect where its tries to "correct" words that I'm spelling correctly (especially science/tech).
Re:Fail (Score:5, Funny)
You typed "Slashdot". Did you mean "Teledoc"?
Re: Fail (Score:2)
It should be okay. People deliberately write "duck duck go"
So I type ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yep. That's what it will boil down to. You'll be typing the name of some obscure site and you'll end up redirected to some ad-infested mouthbreather website instead.
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It's never "duck".
configurable I hope (Score:3)
Re:configurable I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's an attempt to protect against typo squatting. Like people who register amason.com instead of amazon.com to steal your credit card or login. It's a great idea, it just always needs a "No, I typed what I meant, go there" option.
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The issue there is manual typing is a great defence against actual phishing attacks. The largest number of typo-squatting attacks rely on legitimate looking links getting clicked. Manually typing the site in the address bar was always taught as a good security practice to protect you from this.
Re:configurable I hope (Score:4, Insightful)
But what about legitimate domains that just resemble existing high-profile ones? In your example, 'amason.com' could be a typo-squatter, or it could be a forum for people who are, well, sons. Am A Son. It could start as a tongue-in-cheek joke only to suddenly get blacklisted by Google for the crime of resembling a huge company.
WIWTK (Score:3)
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Is that anything like the "Expert Sex Change" site Google would inexplicably recommend to me when I typed in technical queries?
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You'll end up in Penistone, Yorkshire.
SEO spearfishing? (Score:5, Interesting)
How long before someone registers and then drives traffic through a common misspelling so that Google autocorrects correctly spelled entries into the new domain?
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My experience with things of this nature is that no matter how devious I think I'm being, some malicious actor out there has not only already thought of it, but implemented it, and also the next two things I hadn't thought of at all.
It's their 'job' after all. They spend a lot of time thinking about it.
It really wouldn't surprise me to find there are already such sites out there and the SEO job is ready to launch the moment it looks like it'll work.
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Probably about the same length of time taken for people to stop coming up with absurd scenarios that don't have any practical implications.
Hint: Google have a database of domains. They won't be "correcting" typos to unregistered ones giving hackers the ability to execute your absurd scenario.
Re:SEO spearfishing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have actually pointed out the sole situation where this anti-feature does make sense. Attackers register websites which look like the one they want to capture the traffic of, but with a slightly misspelled URL. People who mistype the URL (or mistypes links) then come on the attackers web site without knowing it, type their credentials, etc.
This is the only benefit of "outsmarting the user" that I can think off. In all other cases, it is just user-hostile.
We will send everything you type to our cloud serv (Score:2)
Wasn't my fault I ended up on Pornhub (Score:5, Funny)
Another excuse added to mylist.
Annoying when it fails (Score:1)
and seldom corrects correctly.
I get annoyed each time I type an url and misses something, like a w in www and find myself on the search page with a list of wrong sites and have to rewrite the whole url once more, instead of just giving me an error and letting me add that missing or faulty character.
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My ISP used to do that. Maybe they still do, I no longer use them.
It was beyond annoying, one of the sites I used to visit had a long (19 letters) domain name and they would often reject it, forcing me to retype it. I then bookmarked it and moved the bookmark to the top of my bookmark list, one time in two it would still take me to their error page but then I'd simply click on the bookmark again. This was at least 10 years ago, my second iteration was to use different dns servers and that also did the jo
A thinly veiled cover to grab more personal data (Score:2)
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That one. Also if you're using chrome with a Google Account which Chrome default you to when you want to use Gmail or similar, it's another reason to grab all URLs you're visiting. While you're at it, why not sync all these to all devices as well?
While I think I have nothing to hide, I feel very uneasy about this.
I'm glad that I'm using Firefox as a default and only Chrome when I absolutely have to
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It already is ...
Google can't be trusted (Score:2)
Between the .zip TLD, Google's problems of allowing advertisers to lead Google users directly to phishing sites, and now this, Google is quickly becoming the "don't worry and just trust us" company.
No, Google, we don't trust you! We know you'll use this to allow people who pay lots of money to typo squat. We know money matters more than anything to Google.
Is grammer.com still available? (Score:2)
Google's Clippy (Score:3)
I hate intrusive systems. I hate it when such systems step in making suggestions. Just shut the fuck up and do as I tell you; if I goof up, it is my responsibility, and that's the way I want it.
I have no problem with this feature provided I can disable it easily and permanently.
Finally, no more pr0n (Score:3)
Will Chrome also be able to remove excessive use of the word "like" in speech patterns?
So you're telling me (Score:2)
Google is ripping off a CP/M feature?
Actually a good idea (Score:1)
It has always infuriated me that password.google.com doesn't just redirect to passwords.google.com - Rather than create a CNAME or redirect each near-miss, they can just add this feature.
The real question is: How do you get your made-up company name in the autofill? Search ranking?