Chrome 76: no more https or www in address bar

[harlan4096]

Google Chrome users who upgraded the stable version of the web browser to the recently released Chrome 76 version may have noticed that Chrome does not display https or www anymore in the browser's address bar.

Google made the change in 2018 for the first time when it released Chrome 69 but had to undo it after user outcry over the removed feature. Back then, Google decided to remove what it called trivial subdomains like www. or m. to display only the root domain in the address bar; this lead to issues on sites that supported several of the trival subdomains as it was no longer possible to look at the address to verify the active site.

Google called these subdomains trivial because it believed that most Internet users would not require the information.

Google did state back then that it would remove certain trivial subdomains again at a later point in time. It appears that the time has come, as Chrome 76 hides the www part of the domain name and the https:// protocol information from its address bar.

Chrome stripped https://www. from the address leaving just ghacks.net in the address bar. The lock icon does indicate that the site uses HTTPS but Google plans to remove it as well in the future.

Continue Reading