This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Save-a-click:
This beta version of the app makes it so that when you send just a URL, the recipient only sees the preview (primary image, page title, primary domain of web address) That preview gets a color stylization to match the page and the font is different.
The author doesn’t elaborate on the headline bait “We’re not sure it’s for the best”
It is not for the best since it is a potential security risk and questionable in terms of privacy.
I hate it. I'm in the beta and it doesn't show the full URL
Oof. Hopefully a security professional will slap some sense into someone before it gets out of beta.
Probably not. It's the same issue as Windows File Explorer not showing extensions by default. Asinine.
Only sees a preview as opposed to a preview and the URL?
Given the other replies here: yes
Correct
The only thing Google could do that was for the best is get hit with a meteorite large enough to wipe out the entire campus.
I havent read the article nor the comments yet, but I will guess before I do: Link previews are loaded in google's servers.
There is a metadata protocol called opengraph, it's how apps get the information to display a rich preview. Basically the app takes the link as it's written in the SMS message or Twitter thread and then it tries to fetch that page and then read the open graph metadata from inside. That should give it enough to show a title description and a background image, considering the web developers implemented opengraph.
If Google is planning to use their own servers basically as a proxy then all this means is that the opengraph rich metadata is going to be a little more stale than if the app just fetch the page and generated the rich metadata itself
