Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and newcomer search engines Widget and Gidget have been duking it out in an all out battle for control of eyeballs. Integral to their efforts has been the incessant launching of new and improved and more secure web browsers.
Today, in a joint announcement, all 5 major search engines announced that in an effort to make browsing more secure the address bar has been removed from their respective browsers. This change is a new security measure, in response to a growing trend of people having their browsers hijacked by unscrupulous spyware, scumware, malware and spamware distributors who have been exploiting people who innocently type in an address, believing it would lead to an actual website such as PattysPurebredPuppies.tld, when instead the unfortunate type-in surfer downloads a browser helper object that leads to puppy pron websites.
Henceforth people using the 5 most popular browsers will only be able to navigate to websites by using one of the major search engines, who have taken upon themselves the duty of prescreening all websites for the presence of bad stuff.
"Security in search" is their new joint motto for the latest global web browser distribution campaign removing the address bar.
It's 2012. There's no more address bar.
Can you live with that future?
Is it a good future?
Will it happen or not? Why?
[edited by: Webwork at 4:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2006]
Though having spent some time trawling through the AOL search data, it's plain that this will not be much of a change for a lot of people. It is astonishing how often people enter an address (www.example.com) into search even for sites they go to repeatedly.
Who defines "bad stuff"?
If I choose to look up a prescription, does that mean that I won't be able to because of all the scrpt scams and spams out there?
IMO I don't think it will happen. I think that too many people will be highly upset over not being able to type in their favorite addresses and get to their fav sites.
And if this were to happen, there goes those type in domains that we have been learning about how to pick.
And my view is the same:
You are wrong on first principles: You can find anything with SEs - spam permitting ;) - but if you want a unique site, there is no surer way, currently, than the domain name.
Until someone at least suggests an alternative uniquity system, predicting the end of the one we have is fairly silly, really.
To suggest that losing address bars is somehow safer, needs some explanation.
May I conjecture that you've failed to get the .com you wanted - and somehow we all have to stop using them to make you feel better ;)
[edited by: Quadrille at 6:26 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2006]
A lot of people who type directly into the address bar at the moment are going to realise (find by trial and error) that if they use the search box instead they will probably be able to locate what they are looking for much more quickly.
Newsflash from 1990 ;) The first ever web browser, the "WorldWideWeb browser" (written by TimBL) didn't have an address bar - this method of navigation was only added in browsers such as Mosaic and, later on, Netscape.
</browser geek moment>
As it is, IE7 and Firefox 2.x (and other browsers such as Konqueror and Opera, this is a concerted, coordinated effort) are currently reworking and emphasizing the role of the address bar in the browser. In particular, the address bar is promoted as the way of checking security settings (red background for insecure, for example).
I think the risk for domainers is not necessarily the removal of the address bar itself, but the change in functionality, already well-advanced, which will transform the address bar exclusively into a search box. Type example.com and you search Google/MSN etc. for "example" rather than being blindly taken to example.com.
This combined with phone-home anti-phishing mechanisms checking type-ins against blacklists and whitelists of "trustworthy" or "recognized" domains will have a significant effect on the typo-squatters, but could well spill over onto many parked domains.
unless the 'old browsers' somehow stop working
If Windows update is turned on bye bye previous versions of ie once ie 7 final is released.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to move your IP to another webhost if it's provided through your existing host. I guess incoming links will have to be to a physical domain such as widgets.foo/linkto/somesite --> 123.456.789.10
On further thought IP addresses have many advantages. They save a DNS lookup by the browser, they make it easy to route or filter incoming HTTP requests, they are compatible with HTTP/1.0, etc. etc. etc.
Could an IP address be a trademark?
"No more address bars in browsers!"
Is one trying to predict the future? Yes!
As a de facto standard...until an alternative is offered, why change?
No reason not to change however it has to be simpler, therefore...are standard file structures not the acceptable standard?
Show one the alternatives.
