Google shying away from Chrome address cropping

Google appears to be rethinking its “Origin Chip” initiative that would hide complete URLs when browsing the web from Chrome. Recently, Chrome team member Peter Kasting referred to the address cropping feature as a low priority, saying “”the origin chip work is backburnered” on an issue tracking website. Under the Origin Chip, Chrome’s search bar would only display a website’s domain name, opposed to its full URL. The idea was to make web browsing less distracting.

While it’s unclear why Google is halting its work on the Origin Chip for Chrome, it was recently suggested that its setup could be easily exploited possibly leaving users vulnerable to phishing attacks.

Google isn’t the only company dabbling with address-hiding. Apple’s Safari browser is also cropping web addresses in its initial dev releases of the company’s new Yosemite build of OS X. The outfit has also uses a similar setup with its mobile browser in iOS 7, which displays a website’s domain name instead of its full web address. While Google may be shying away from this strategy, its competitors appear to furthering their efforts.