Snippet: Burying the URL ☇

Although experimental (and Matt and I talked about it on a yet to be edited episode of Patent Pending), Allen Pike talks about a possible change in Chrome:

Of course it still supports them, but the time where users actually see URLs is ending. With Chrome’s “Enable origin chip in Omnibox” flag, Location becomes a write-only field. Clicking there no longer reveals the URL for the user to edit or share, but instead waits for you to search Google.

I still do plenty with URLs and would probably turn off the feature, but I think this makes sense for Google, especially since so many people stupidly use the search box on Google.com for typing in URLs. In fact, a local car dealer even instructs viewers to “Google ______.com” on their television commercials.