Concern that the Chrome browser lock icon is misleading leads to replacement with a more neutral one
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Chrome announced that it will soon transition the Chrome browser away from the lock icon that signals a secure HTTPS connection and introduce a more neutral icon that they believe will present a better user experience.
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The lock icon is an artifact from a time when secure connections were the exception and not the norm.
Why HTTPS Lock Icon Is Going Away
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Users could count on the green lock icon to remind them that a connection was secure.
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It used to be commonly understood that only financial and ecommerce sites required a secure connection and that sites that didn’t conduct transactions didn’t need to have secure connections.
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But the old attitudes changed when Google and other companies began encouraging publishers to transition to secure connections in order to enhance user privacy and safety.
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Google eventually went so far as to make the secure HTTPS connection a ranking factor, which motivated holdouts who still insisted that HTTPS was pointless for non-ecommerce sites.