It’s the buzz in reddit a few days ago and it seems that the latest Chrome update for the development builds has confirmed the rumor that Google has purposely removed the http:// from the address bar of it’s Chrome Browser.

Purposely because according to a bug report on chromium Google Code page issued by a user who noted the change, a coder had responded that the removal of the http:// is a feature not a bug. Surprising that the company being described here isn’t Apple huh? The reaction of the community was expectedly negative.

If you’re wondering how this works, here’s a screenshot of a before (when you type an address with http://) and after (when you press enter)

Now one possible issue that could arise from the removal of http:// is interaction with applications sending their URLs to Chrome, an example would be your clipboard sending a copied URL to chrome. Google assures however, that they are addressing the issue to prevent “breakage” of this interaction. As of now though, several users have been complaining about a complete breakage of the standard clipboard functionality :(.

No word from the camp of other browsers if they will be willing to or at least thinking of following suit. I for one however really find it weird to see an address bar without the http:// on it.