Google Takes Its First Steps Toward Killing the URL

In September, members of Google's Chrome security team put forth a radical proposal: Kill off URLs as we know them. They do, though, want to rework how browsers convey what website you're looking at, so that you don't have to contend with increasingly long and unintelligible URLs--and the fraud that has sprung up around them. In a talk at the Bay Area Enigma security conference on Tuesday, Chrome usable security lead Emily Stark is wading into the controversy, detailing Google's first steps toward more robust website identity. Stark emphasizes that Google isn't trying to induce chaos by eliminating URLs. Rather, it wants to make it harder for hackers to capitalize on user confusion about the identity of a website.