Google Wants Non Secure (HTTP) Sites To Have Warning

Google Chrome is submitting a proposal to change the behavior around how browsers mark HTTPS sites as secure but HTTP sites as nothing.

They want HTTP sites to specifically carry a warning label that it is not secure. Kind of how when you go to an HTTPS site that is not secure, it warns you. They want something like that for sites that are not on HTTPS.

It is like placing a sign on a house, saying this house does not have an alarm system.

Google said:

We, the Chrome Security Team, propose that user agents (UAs) gradually change their UX to display non-secure origins as affirmatively non-secure. We intend to devise and begin deploying a transition plan for Chrome in 2015. The goal of this proposal is to more clearly display to users that HTTP provides no data security.

This has nothing to do with ranking, that is the Google HTTPS ranking signal - this is not SEO, this is just what users will see on HTTP sites.

I personally think this is going overboard.

Via one of the Chrome team members:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.