Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823
Does this mean they'll also "backtrack" on their destruction of the URL? I was extremely disturbed and horrified when I realised that not only did they replace / with >, but also seemed to arbitrarily remove and rewrite pieces of URLs shown in the results (e.g. all articles from HM would show nothing more than "news.ycombinator.com > item", which was intensely confusing.)
I opened Chrome on a friends phone (first time on Chrome mobile in years) and was shocked to see the url bar is no longer editable. It just gave me a weird context menu with a copy icon.
I guess they really want to funnel everyone through search...
Right next to that copy icon is a pencil - the edit icon.
In other words, an obfuscation of functionality that clearly shows their attempts at behavioural conditioning.
More like- how often do you edit a URL in the bar on mobile? It's a pain in the ass.
Every single time someone im's me some url with a bunch of tracking garbage after the ?