Venture Beat covered a story today that will peak the interest of domain investors.
Do we still need the URL — that gangly collection of slashes and gobbledygook? A new experimental version of the Google Chrome browser says no.
Chrome Canary, like the legendary canary lowered into mines to early-detect dangerous gases, is a leading-edge version of the Chrome browser. Google uses it to test out ideas, and one idea in the new Chrome 36 version of Canary is to bury the full URL into the top-level domain name. Even navigating within the site shows only the site name.
Read the full article here
Now this looks to be more about hiding the ugly string after the TLD, now how this will all plays out remains to be seen. Personally I like seeing the URL, to check out exactly where I am on the site and to check for nefarious things like phishing.
When only the top-level domain is showing in Canary’s Omnibox, you can still see the full URL by clicking the “origin chip” button – that is, on the domain name itself. (The button becomes enabled only by typing chrome://flags/#origin-chip-in-omnibox into the Canary Omnibox.). Clicking on the domain allows you to edit it.
