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Tobias Fried's avatar

When Chrome hid the protocol they replaced it with a shield icon that served the same purpose, and had already been showing full-screen warnings about visiting insecure content when the site was not TLS encrypted.

I infer from your comment that you're referring to the decision of these AI browsers to abstract away any semblance of the true URL, and that your are endorsing that as a product decision. I'd caution you, as someone who recently admitted to being phished by a bad Venmo link, to reconsider the importance of a URI as the only true certificate of authenticity most lay users of the internet have.

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Thorsten Ball's avatar

No, I only refer to Chrome and the decision from 2018/2019 to hide the protocol and www. I can't find an official announcement, but this is what I mean: https://superuser.com/questions/1333575/chrome-address-bar-no-longer-shows-protocol-or-www-subdomain

In my current version of Chrome there is also not a shield anymore.

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Tobias Fried's avatar

Sorry for reading more into it than was intended, but it is worth pointing out that there is still a full-page warning and a "lock slash" icon when visiting insecure content. The feature was thoughtfully implemented, and I'm not trying to disagree that it was ultimately a good product decision... Just trying to make a case for the sanctity and importance of the URL given what I am seeing as significantly more risky and less considered product decisions happening in the AI browser space now.

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