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Comment by jake_the_third | Hacker News Reader

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jake_the_third

1. Org hosts physical web server at www.example.org.

2. Google directs user to www.example.org.

3. User sees url as example.org and notes it down.

4. User needs to visit example.org again, but for some reason it doesn't work.

5. User goes to coworker who shows him that example.org does in fact work (hidden www).

6. Endless confusion ensues.

This is bad UX decision on Google part (on top of it breaking published standards)

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This is going to be a problem weather or not Chrome changes www.example.org to example.org. There is a _very_ non-trivial chance the person was going to write down example.org anyways.

But why add to the confusion by hiding important information?

If in most uses minds, "www.example.com" is the same as "example.com", then "example.com" is less confusing because they have probably never heard of the word "subdomain".

Have "most users" been measured?

Perhaps they should be taught.

Otherwise let's move on to making nuclear reactors less confusing.

My admittedly anecdotal evidence suggest that they do not. From my other comment: I worked as tech support for a large org (300+ users) most of my career and have dealt with most types of users. I've only seen them interact with the address bar in one of two ways: explorer shortcuts on the desktop/browser bookmarks (few) or stick-it notes on the monitor or keyboard (many).

If you count only the people who require tech support then of course you're only going to see the people who require tech support. But they're not the only users.

Developers and techies are users too and they're much less likely to call tech support in general.

This harms them far more than it helps the people who need help.

And this move was made under the guise of improving ux for normal users and not users who know how subdomains work. What's the point you're trying to make?

As a user who's harmed by this, how do I disable it?

My parents write the exact url for many bill paying sites. I would bet a lot people do the same.

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