Whoosh. I agree, coming up with some alternative that provides the services an URL and its display do (from understanding where you are to noting what options are being passed to being able to cut and paste pieces of it), in a fashion that will serve all the users of the web (from individuals to corporations to storage of massive document databases, and from neophytes to professionals) is non-trivial. Cool if they can manage it, though.
It should go without saying that whatever solution Google comes up with should be something that doesn’t affect how the web actually works — i.e., is still compatible with every other browser out there, because the underlying URLs still exist — and that still allows access to the full URL when needed and that doesn’t require some additional “registration” or credentialing. In other words, I see this as being successful and useful only if it’s on the presentation / UI layer, not anything more deeper or more intrusive than that. Make the Internet better, vs. breaking it.
Google Wants to Kill the URL
“Whatever we propose is going to be controversial. But it’s important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck.”
I like URLs. They are incredibly useful in my work.
From the article, "killing the URL" is typical headline hype – it does sound like they're talking about presentation only. But the URL (and related topics like URIs and URNs) is something that brings a huge amount of value, compared to the way things used to be, and these things are baked into enough software that they will never go away as concepts. For people like me, being able to see (and manipulate) the full URL in a browser is something I'll never be able to do without at my job.
What the hell is a url.
"https://plus.google.com" is an URL,
+Sandra Anderson
+Bill Garrett Yeah, my assumption (as noted) is that this is a presentation layer thing, and possibly a "way to get to a basic website" thing that doesn't require those codes. Trying to actually change things to do away with URLs altogether would be a bigger change than I think even Google would try to push.
(Heck, I've even recently dealt with legacy code that had non-URL IP addresses in it. That stuff sticks around until it breaks.)
The most important problem is that URLs are not used only for the web. A lot of protocols on many different ports can and do rely on them. Break that, and you're going to face a breakdown of a lot of popular services (thinking of you, rtsp).
+Sandra Anderson "Universal Resource Locator" is what that stands for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL
+Dave Hill – The contranegative take is that driving out a universal standard is a key step toward market control. Technically, Google doesn't have to kill the URL, they just have to optimize in favor of their own preferred alternative and their dominant market position will mean the old standard dies of access atrophy as in your comment about IP addresses in legacy code.