Raymond Wong at Dvice (http://dvice.com/archives/author/raymond_wong) reports that some mockups from Google seems to be “[…] killing the URL address bar in its Chrome web browser. Always looking to shave pixels off of its Chrome web browser, Google is toying around with four different layouts that could drastically change the way you browse the web: classic, compact, sidetab and touch. The most notable change is of course the “compact” version that does away with the URL bar, and puts “multiple URL bars into tabs.” It essentially gives you more vertical pixels, which means less scrolling within websites. […]” (full article at http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/google-is-think.php, original article at Lifehacker and by Wolfgang Gruener at http://www.conceivablytech.com/5746/products/google-may-kill-chrome-url-bar/).
I think that browsing has made lot of step forwards during time, but one thing remained quite the same the URL bar. But I’ m confident that Google usability magicians will be able to imagine something without the bar.
This post as a comment also at http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/google-is-think.php
How I see the world 