Google kills Chrome notification center, figures you probably won’t care anyway

Google today launched Chrome 46 for Windows, Mac, and Linux with a few security improvements and new developer tools, VentureBeat reports.

More importantly, Google said that “this change is a better visual indication of the security state of the page relative to HTTP”. This is indicated by a lock with a yellow “caution triange” icon. In other words, users might feel that a protected HTTPS site with minor errors is less secure than an HTTP site with no security, which is obviously not the case.

The move, made in conjunction with the release of Chrome 46, is partly meant to encourage Web site owners to be a little more proactive in adopting encryption measures on their sites.

However, the reassuring green “https” in the browser’s address field will remain reserved for fully encrypted pages. “During this process the site may not be fully secured, but it will usually not be less secure than before”, they explained. Google offers this service. By today, the company announced that it will remove the notification center from Chrome in following updates, while Chrome 46 still includes it. As for the reason why they are planning such a radical move that will be applied to Mac, Linux and Windows, Chrome OS keeping its notification center, was: “In practice, few users visit the notification center”. If there’s any HTTP element on a website, a blank page icon will show up instead. The ultimate goal is to present Web pages in one of two states: either secure or not secure.

It hasn’t been long since Chrome started supporting push notifications for web pages via the web push standard, but notifications aren’t new for the browser, apps and extensions for Chrome have supported push notifications on desktop since as far back as 2010.

The notification center that you may have used in the past to look up messages will be removed.