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Google has tried on and off for years to hide full URLs in Chrome's address bar, because apparently long web addresses are scary and evil. Despite the public backlash that came after every previous attempt, Google is pressing on with new plans to hide all parts of web addresses except the domain name.
A few new feature flags have appeared in Chrome's Dev and Canary channels (V85), which modify the appearance and behavior of web addresses in the address bar. The main flag is called "Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Path, Query, and Ref" which hides everything in the current web address except the domain name. For example, "https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-chromebook-review/" is simply displayed as "androidpolice.com."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:48AM (12 children)
AMP is the name of the game!
Here's how this plays out:
1. Develop AMP, which is basically the same as using google as a hard-proxy server (i.e. you interact with google, not the website itself)
2. Promote websites that use AMP and thus give you (google) total control and visibility into what you do on 'that' site
3. Punish website that don't use AMP by pushing them down in the search results
4. (YOU ARE HERE) Now that everyone (that matters - i.e. gives you money) uses AMP, hide the fact that they are using AMP
5. You now effectively 'own' the web (as much as you didn't own it before in the heads of the uneducated who think that google or fb /are/ the web), /everything/ goes through you, you are now the all-seeing eye into everything and anything
6. There is no profit step; while it generates a nice boatload of profit, this isn't done for profit, it is done purely for power and subjugation of the populace: panem et circenses.
The internet was a cute little experiment, too bad predatory* capitalism destroyed it, just like it destroys everything else it touches.
(*) Note that I refer to 'predatory' capitalism, not just capitalism.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:51AM (1 child)
AMP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages [wikipedia.org]
Everything is about mobile these days, the desktop has been abandoned.
And here we are, still onanizing about "2??? will be the year of Linux on the Desktop"
(Score: 5, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday June 15 2020, @05:33PM
...only in your dreams.
The desktop is alive and well among those who don't keep their heads buried in their phones — which is to say, the productive portion of the population.
--
I wouldn't do anything for a Klondyke bar,
but I'd do some sketchy stuff for pizza.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:54AM
Google needs to be regulated or broken up.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 15 2020, @11:03AM (4 children)
Meh, haven't been using Chrome on my Android phone since... lemme think... I reckon it was well before Covid.
Now, working from home, the only use I have for my mobile is multi-factor authentication.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday June 15 2020, @11:22AM (1 child)
protip: separate browser sessions for different sharepoint logins.. and only log in to one at a time (no way to tell which message from microsoft relates to which account)
I have chrome on one laptop for netflix and occasional google maps use. If I could be bothered turning no script and ghostery off and on, wouldn't even need chrome for those..
Why 'browse' on chrome, when you don't have to?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @12:54PM
I hate to be ... cynical, but I used to do the same thing. Every profile had its own set up with finely configured settings for each add-on. So for instance, noscripts in profile A would allow scripts from site A, but not site B, whereas noscripts in profile B /would/ allow scripts from site B, yet not from site A, etc. etc.
But it gets to you, it really does. These fuckers know how to grind you down until the operational and mental cost of maintaining this becomes too much to bear: as an example: both site A and B use reCaptcha (which should burn in the hottest fire), but that uses google which I do NOT want to whitelist (on noscripts, or uMatrix, ...) so every single time, I have to go through 3-4-5 reloads of the site, tweaking the temporary settings of the add-ons just to get a website to work. Now this doesn't mean that any of this website behavior is acceptable at all, but it *is* their behavior, so here we are, and I have/had to deal with it.
I went from FF to Brave because of all this (yes, Brave, which I think is one of the better Chromium-clones despite all the FUD posted here - maybe Opera is a bit better, but I'm not sure about that). In the end, it just grind you dooooowwwnnnn and you just want shit to work.
It's all fun and games being a luddite, but at some point you just go "fuck this shit" and adapt.
Unfortunately, it's feudalism all over again, let us, the robber-barons/feudal lords, protect you, for we know what is best for you.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday June 15 2020, @11:27AM (1 child)
I've been using Android phones for years and I have never used Chrome on any of them.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @02:36PM
It's the default browser. I used android for years as my phone never realising the default browser was called "Chrome" or that it had anything to do with other browsers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday June 15 2020, @01:50PM (3 children)
The two biggest problems with AMP
1) Technology leads content and you go to https://amp.dev/ [amp.dev] and ALL the examples of AMP are the shittiest clickbait crap we've all come to despise. Its literally being promoted as a technology to shovel crap.
2) Pre-rendering downloading makes pages appear faster but burns a lot of wasted bandwidth. The corporations all want to waste bandwidth
AMP is literally only appealing to corporations, and offered nothing to end users. Its kinda the DIVX player of the 2010s generation. What a shit product.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday June 15 2020, @03:50PM
What irks me about AMP is this: the performance gains from pre-rendering are nothing compared to the performance gains to be had by not including a gazillion JS libraries. Too many of those are marketing crap, but even just development stuff: include a framework, and it includes further libraries, which include further libraries. Suddenly your simple homepage is dozens of MB in size, just because the developer wanted some trivial feature from some bloated framework.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:42PM
Much of the AMP content is actually hosted by Google. The vendor lock-in, increased tracking telemetry, and captive users can easily offset the extra bandwidth by Google.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:34AM
So basically just what Google likes to have in the top 1000 search results for most any topic.