The unexpected Google wide domain check bypass
Windows again. &quot;Let&#x27;s use a backslash instead of a slash in paths&quot; has to be up there with &quot;NUL-terminated strings&quot; in terms of tiny bad ideas from long ago that are still haunting us.<p>Of course it&#x27;s not as though Google had a choice at the outset, I&#x27;m sure some non-trivial number of web sites magically didn&#x27;t work (and maybe still don&#x27;t work) if you insist that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.example.com\works\fine\on\my\pc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.example.com\works\fine\on\my\pc</a> doesn&#x27;t do what the person writing it expects... I think we can blame some early Internet Explorer build for first having this work (I can&#x27;t see Netscape allowing it) and then it becomes a choice whether to be a purist or sigh and move on once IE gets popular and real people do it.