Chrome 69 hides subdomains like ‘m.’ and ‘www.’

Google Chrome version 69 no longer displays the ‘m.’ by default. and ‘www.’ subdomains in the address bar. According to the developers, this subdomain is ‘insignificant’ and therefore redundant, but certainly with ‘m.’ there is a substantial difference in where the user ends up.

Chrome 69 was promoted in the release channel on September 4. It is striking that the measure is not mentioned anywhere in the changelog of the application. That goes for the announcing blog post and the full changelog of commits. The motivation for the change can therefore only be found for those who navigate to the relevant flag. When editing the address bar text, the subdomain does appear and the option can still be toggled.

In a discussion post on the Chromium forum, users strongly opposed the change. One commenter, who says he works for an Internet service provider, calls the change stupid. This is because the presence or absence of ‘www.’ in some cases leads to two different destinations. Of course that also applies to ‘m.’ Good examples are tumblr.com and m.tumblr.com; these are two different sites that now look exactly the same in the address bar.

Another commenter notes that the system can also behave strangely. The example URL ‘subdomain.www.domain.com’ changes to ‘subdomain.domain.com’. Even when the ‘trivial’ subdomain is in the middle of a url, it will be removed. A developer acknowledges that this is a bug that needs to be corrected.

Google has recently announced that it will no longer display the URL in Chrome in the future. Addresses would have become too complex, which can confuse users and make them vulnerable to maliciously manipulated URLs. Google wants to combat this, but without making it clear which site a user is on. However, this change makes it less clear where exactly a user is located.

Left tumblr.com and right m.tumblr.com