Personal View site logo
Google next mission: Killing the URL and replace them with paid navigation system
  • Google wants to rethink the URL. Speaking to Wired, Chrome's engineering manager Adrienne Porter Felt said: "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."

    Chrome's director of engineering, Parisa Tabriz, told Wired, "I don't know what this will look like, because it's an active discussion in the team right now. But I do know that whatever we propose is going to be controversial. That's one of the challenges with a really old and open and sprawling platform. Change will be controversial whatever form it takes. But it's important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck."

    Watch out for this, as first they will force all sites to SSL, next start approving SSL, next start getting fees for approval of each page, and later will start to get fees to having you in search and be allowed in their browser. This guys think big.

  • 5 Replies sorted by
  • They will just bring back AOL, LOL!

  • It's very unlikely that someone will come up with something that is so much better that it would be worth the time and expense to switch everything globally to using/supporting it.

    Ruling class will come up with something much worse. But something that allows full and easy control and censorship.

  • Maybe someone can form a new URL committee who can go away for 2-3 years and come up with a proposal. By the time everybody is done, we will have something like an XML document that must be composed in order to visit any website.

    The current URL scheme plus hierarchical DNS system is definitely not perfect, but has nearly-universal support and is "good enough" for most things. It's very unlikely that someone will come up with something that is so much better that it would be worth the time and expense to switch everything globally to using/supporting it.

  • @tonalt

    Don't you have something more useful to do in life than oppose any post here in such stupid way?

  • I agree with Google, current urls sucks. It's about time someone is doing something about it.