Google Chrome
Google has published a plan to end FTP support for Chromium and Chrome. In Chrome 80, scheduled for early 2020, FTP support is expected to be phased out for stable release users (for corporate deployments, DisableFTP flag will be added to return FTP). Chrome 82 plans to completely remove the code and resources used to support the FTP client.
For a long time, browser publishers, including those of Chrome and Firefox, have advocated for the total removal of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) support in their respective browsers. Used by Internet users, The FTP protocol is generally requested on the web to retrieve or share files remotely.
In principle they advocate that many software programs are available as FTP clients and can perform the same actions as sending or retrieving files through this protocol.
However, some users who do not want to worry about installing a separate FTP client prefer to continue using the browser to retrieve data from an FTP server.
Google started its movement several months ago
A gradual cutback in FTP support started in Chrome 63, in which the FTP access to resources began to be marked as an insecure connection.
In Chrome 72, the content of resources downloaded via the ftp: // protocol was disabled in the browser window and FTP was not allowed when downloading the secondary resources of the documents.
In Chrome 74, FTP access through an HTTP proxy stopped working Due to a bug, and in Chrome 76, proxy support for FTP was removed. Currently, downloading files via direct links and viewing directory content is still operational.
Y With Chrome 76, proxy support for FTP has been completely removed. In recent versions of Chrome, the browser does not support encrypted connections or proxy servers. It should also be noted that Google has already removed support for rendering resources and retrieving secondary resources via FTP.
According to Google FTP, it is hardly used anymore: the proportion of FTP users is approximately 0,1%. This protocol is also not secure due to the lack of traffic encryption.
FTPS (FTP over SSL) support for Chrome is not implemented and the company sees no reason to terminate the FTP client in the browser, considering its lack of demand and also does not intend to continue supporting the insecure implementation (since point of view of the lack of encryption).
But for Chrome maintainers, this protocol raises security concerns, as files are sent clearly over the network.
Therefore, for several years, the company is committed to a feature download policy of the FTP implementation in Chrome.
In view of all these efforts to get rid of FTP in Chrome, many users have long turned to FTP software, at least for those who continue to use this protocol for file transfers.
On the Google side, Chrome developers report that on stable Chrome, FTP usage accounts for about 0.1% for Windows users about 7 days. Across all platforms, only about 0.01% of users use this protocol over a 28-day period.
And during the same 28-day period, roughly 0.03% of users across all platforms download something via FTP, which is the only thing users can do with FTP URLs, Google notes.
In addition, Due to the low use of FTP in Chrome, browser developers now argue that it is no longer necessary to invest in FTP client support existing and therefore obsolete and will remove support for the existing FTP client.
FTP in Chrome via URLs. Starting with Chrome 78, FTP support will be disabled in preflight checks, and policy checks and a flag for FTP control will be added.
In Chrome 80, it will begin phasing out FTP support.