Google is running an auto-update-to-HTTPS experiment in Chrome

From zdnet.com

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The Google Chrome team will be running an experiment this week in an attempt to find solutions to an HTTPS problem that Mozilla also attempted to solve last year.

The problem that Google is trying to solve is called “mixed content,” which Google describes as below:

Mixed content occurs when initial HTML [a web page] is loaded over a secure HTTPS connection, but other resources (such as images, videos, stylesheets, scripts) are loaded over an insecure HTTP connection. This is called mixed content because both HTTP and HTTPS content are being loaded to display the same page, and the initial request was secure over HTTPS. Modern browsers display warnings about this type of content to indicate to the user that this page contains insecure resources.

For the past few years, mixed content has been a big problem for browser makers and other organizations that have been pushing HTTPS adoption.

Mixed content browser errors –which sometimes are known to block users from accessing a website altogether– have scared many site operators from migrating to HTTPS, many fearing they’d lose traffic revenue for no tangible benefit for supporting HTTPS.

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