Google to test simplified domain display in Chrome

[harlan4096]

Google Chrome users may soon see only the domain name in the web browser's address bar instead of the full page address.
Google published several development bugs on the Chromium website that highlight the changes. The main bugs, Issue 895940 Experiment with trimming everything but the Origin for Steady State Elisions, and Issue 1090393: Implement simplified domain display in the omnibox, highlight what the experiment entails.

When enabled in the browser, Chrome will only show the domain name and not the full page URL. If you are on the page https://www.ghacks.net/2020/06/09/micros...-overview/, Google Chrome will only show https://www.ghacks.net/ by default.

The company plans to run the experiment on desktop and mobile versions of its web browser, and has created several new experimental flags for that.

The reason for running the experiment, according to a developer, is that the display of the full URL makes it difficult for the average user to distinguish between legitimate and malicious sites.
 

We think this is an important problem area to explore because phishing and other forms of social engineering are still rampant on the web, and much research shows that browsers' current URL display patterns aren't effective defenses.

Note that the implementation of the experiments is ongoing and that some functionality is not yet implemented fully. I go the "on interaction" flag to work properly but could not get the main hiding flag to work in the latest Chrome Canary release.
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