With the release of Chrome 79, Google completes its goal of erasing www from the browser by no longer allowing Chrome users to automatically show the www trivial subdomain in the address bar.

When Chrome 76 was released, Google decided to no longer show the www "trivial subdomain" in the address bar when visiting a web site. This means, that if you are visiting www.bleepingcomputer.com, Chrome would only show bleepingcomputer.com in the address bar as illustrated in the image below.

WWW removed from URL in address bar

According to a Google engineer, www is considered a trivial subdomain because "this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases".

Many users, though, felt that this was a security issue, could be confusing for users, and is technically incorrect because www.domain.com is not always the same host as domain.com.

Google, though, allowed users who wished to see the www subdomain in the address bar to disable the #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-trivial-subdomains Chrome flag or install the Google's Suspicious Site Reporter Chrome extension.

Even when the #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-trivial-subdomains flag was eventually hidden in Chrome 78, users could make it available again by enabling the chrome://flags/#temporary-unexpire-flags-m76 flag.

Unexpire M76 Flags flag

With the release of Chrome 79, the #omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state flags have been completely removed from the browser and the only way to show www in the address bar is to click twice in the address bar to edit the URL or install the Google Chrome extension.

This is something that the vast majority of users will not know to do or want to do.

Regardless of which side you are on regarding the 'www' debate, if you are a Chrome user: Bye www!

Thx to beccanet for the tip!