When I said "what problem does it solve" I was thinking of usability problems as opposed to disagreements over aesthetics. Did the presence of "http" confuse users? Did it prevent them from completing tasks they wanted to accomplish with their browser? How does its removal help the user?

Anything that is not understood by a user is potentially a source of confusion and error.

The http prefix did nothing when navigating. You could type 'www.google.com' and get exactly the same result as 'http://www.google.com. It is redundant, unnecessary, wasteful. It can be removed, because it does nothing.

This is a usability problem. You just don't experience it.

When I type "www.google.com" into the search string of my search engine and hit "I feel lucky" then it gives exactly the same result (and that's how I saw a few people navigate to sites).

So if we go with the path of UI simplification, we could as well get rid of the URL (what does this TLA mean for a user, anyway?) and just leave a single input-only field.

Wait, that's exactly what is there today after you click on the icon with the house on it... So, maybe just make a checkbox "hide the URL input" and "show search engine homepage on new tab" ?

I never said UI simplification should be privileged above all other concerns. Your idea has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

Yes, it did do something. It informed me that I was on an unsecure connection.

Do you generally assume you are on a secure connection unless told otherwise?

The article listed bugs. Facebook and Twitter will work fine, it would just be more inconvenient because of the bugs introduced by the new scheme.

It's not redundant information, it is information on what protocol is being used. That is important information. And this information is still being displayed, the only difference is it is displayed in an alternate form of an icon. An icon representation introduced by Chromium and unfamiliar to the majority of internet users. Now the Chromium developers have to decide how to display alternate protocols, will https be represented as text or as an icon? Will other browsers use the same icon representation? Are we assuming Chromium users will only use Chromium, will this confuse users who regularly use other browsers?

To say that other bugs will just be fixed ignores the bugs caused by the unnecessarily introduced complexity.

You say the protocol being used is important. Is it? Why? I think it is not. I think the important things for 99.9% of people are: (i) this is a website, (ii) this is a secure website. The actual protocol being used is a technical issue that the user does not need to know. The user just needs to know if it is secure or not.

You take issue with the icon. For years browsers have added a padlock to the UI when https:// is being used. Do we therefore need the 'https:// part? Do you think there should be no such icon?

In fact, I would argue that displaying a globe icon for most websites, and a padlock icon for secure websites, is an enormous boon for web security. Consider the previous situation, without icons: you are asking the user to spot the difference between 'http:// and 'https://. This is not something everyone will manage.

You don't like the abstraction because you are comfortable with what is being abstracted away. This does not mean the abstraction is not valuable. It means it is not valuable to you.

I don't take issue with icons in and of themselves, it's the replacement of the text representation with an icon. it's the break in conventions. The http/https part has always been visible on any browser. Having http:// at the beginning of URLs certainly isn't my idea of perfection, but to some extent we're stuck with it. It's much like the floppy disk icon for "Save". Why use that? There are kids today who have never even seen a floppy disk. But that doesn't mean that the floppy disk icon should just be up and removed from toolbars. A lot of thought should be put into a change like that.

It's not really like the save icon. The padlock for https is like the save icon, because it is a metaphor for a certain interesting state. Http, on the other hand, doesn't tell you anything except that you're not on https (or ftp, etc). So you don't need to be told about it.

Suppose the icon for your email program has a badge on it with an unread count. I'm suggesting that 'http:// is kind of like keeping that badge there with a zero when you have no emails.