Yes these "improvements" in Chrome are meant to make google the defacto interface for using the web.

Imagine a world where 99% of users do not have any concept of URLs or any other fundamental WWW concepts. Instead, they open Chrome type whatever they want and get the results. It is not difficult to imagine a world where the non-tech users do not think of google as search engine but as internet in itself.

Except that Google has to pay Apple $12 billion a year to remain their default search engine, a price that has increased every year.

What chrome did by training users to enter their searches in the address bar (via the default tab’s fake google search box which moves the cursor to the URL field) was stupid, expensive, and probably undermines Google’s ability to be a destination web site in the long term.

At this point, the overwhelming number of devices are not Google’s. There is no reason to think that in the future they will be. After this anti trust stuff their influence over android may be even less than it is now.

>After this anti trust stuff their influence over android may be even less than it is now.

Sadly then Android will probably falter. As much as things are a shitshow, the unified app ecosystem is a big deal to allow competition for smartphones themselves which allows users to switch without getting burnt on app costs. Otherwise corporations are all about vendor lockin and fucking over the consumer for short term gain because greed is king these days.

You don't have to imagine that world, merely adjust the ratio of people living in it. Are we at 30% of the population living in that world already? Is the ratio progressing towards 99%? How quickly?

No, we’re at 99% now.

Back in the day, the internets worked this way with AOL. Every big compamy had an AOL keyword term.

My wife already does this. She hates typing urls, even when she knows them (eg Amazon, Home Depot) and doesn't really see why they are necessary when she can just Google everything.

I do hope you tell her the prices she pays are significantly higher because amazon and home depot have to pay for her arriving via google. Some google clicks are $25 each! You can be sure its you that pays that bill in the end. Better hope not too many people looked at what you want to buy before you did. ;)

Someone should fund a "cash back for not using google" browser extension.

Amazon has smile.amazon.(tld) that sort-of serves to nudge people away from search - doesn't give cash back to you, but donates to a nominated charity.

It also relegates other browsers to the domain of "that's too technical I don't know what all those letters mean".

Safari does this too, doesn't it? What do you think Apple's motivation is?

I don't use Safari on my MBP for exactly this reason (lack of extensions being another). Apple has always erred on the side of "obscure everything that even remotely reminds users of PCs". The current iPad's marketing slogan is "What's a computer?".

They've introduced mouse support (in 2019 no less), but even then it's disabled by default and buried in the Accessibility settings menu.

"Google evil. Apple privacy."- HN

While I'm not a fan of obscuring what a URL is actually doing, this already is happening with headers.

But this is news because it's Google.

Apple does this and it's a "feature".

Marketing is a dangerous tool.

In Japan, very rarely do I see URLs. Most of the time, it's a keyword in what looks like an input box and "検索" (which literally means search) in what looks like a button. It's been this way for as long as I've been here (> 6 years).

Edit: come to think of it, a keyword in Japanese is easier to remember/type than an url in latin characters. Sure, now there's IDN in domains and TLDs, but that wasn't a thing until relatively recently, and that's still harder to remember/type than keywords.

In what browser?

I think in advertisements.

i.e. instead of a poster telling you to go to "https://news.ycombinator.com" it might say

Search: Hacker News

Which opens the door for the other HN to play SEO games.

Exactly this. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

For many users, "Google" is already the Internet.

Exactly. Plenty of people used to always tell me they opened the internet when they opened IE, and no doubt many still don’t know the difference.