Google has pulled the plug on its ongoing test to hide entire URLs, saying it doesn't help with security.
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The company's experiment with showing only partial URLs in the browser bar was first spotted by Android Police on Thursday. The experiment is officially ending without being launched.
Google has tried to hide entire URLs occasionally for years, most notably in Chrome 86, which launched last year. Chrome 86 hid all parts of web addresses except the domain name, and introduced a hover animation.
According to Chromium's bug tracker, a Google developer said that the company's original reasoning behind hiding full URLs was "because phishing and other forms of social engineering are still widespread on the web, and extensive research shows that current browser URL rendering patterns are not an effective defense."
