Google Killing URLs, what does it mean for testing?

I stumbled across this post on Wired about Google Chrome and the future of URLs

Then this post which starts to question the ethics of what may come of it

https://sonniesedge.co.uk/posts/amp-urls

And points to this:

Partly I’m thinking testers should be aware of this stuff, whether the Google AMP thing goes ahead or not. As new tech and approaches come in, we need to consider what this means for testing.

What problems can incur from the above for your project(s)?

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A nice range of news, comment and opinions in those 3 posts - from the official Google Chrome line to the nicely sceptical and then to the full on rant :grinning:

When I read the Wired article I was initially intrigued to see what the proposed alternative to URLs was, but having read it, I’m none the wiser as no actual alternative has been proposed. I don’t really see any problems with URLs anyway: to me its just a way of finding/locating/naming something, like a phone number or a car registration plate number.

There definitely could be problems if Google comes up with an alternative that’s not been thought through properly and only serves Google’s aims, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

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Interesting stuff, thanks for the links and bringing it to our attention
Guess it’s a watch this space on the proposals for the url changes but I’d not heard of the Amp discussion

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ugh… Well the way URLs are being used right now is a big workaround, like the first article says. And people are misusing them and causing confusion. But it seems like the right thing to do would be to design websites to not need to use those URL hacks everywhere–to have a nice clean experience for people. Not replace it with some new thing.

URLs were new at one time. Whatever solution Google or someone else comes up with, will eventually end up like how URLs are now. Better to fix the actual problems than to scrap it and start over, IMO.

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