The green bar was a marker that was given with Extended Validation SSL Certificates. With Extended Validation certificates, there are additional steps of verification required (then with Domain Validation certificates, for example, which only authenticate ownership of a domain) which confirm the physical existence of a company and that the company owns the specified domain. The green bar appeared in the address bar before the URL. As suggested by the name, it was green, and featured the name of the registered company, along with the padlock symbol we have all come to expect from HTTPS-enabled sites.
In Google Chrome, the green bar actually stopped being green in September 2018 with the release of Chrome 69. However, company information remained. Since fall 2019, the green bar and company information has been removed from all major browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (with Apple’s Safari browser, having removed these indicators even earlier).
This major change to Extended Validation SSL certificates is mostly to keep up with the changing times. Currently having an SSL certificate is more the rule than the exception since many providers include SSL certificates for FREE. Because of this, the reasoning behind the decision to remove the green bar is that it’s more helpful to tell users when a website does NOT have an SSL, rather than when it does.
Although the green bar no longer exists for Extended Validation Certificates, if you own a business or enterprise, an Extended Validation certificate is still a helpful sign to users who want to know the legitimacy of your website. Although it is no longer so prominently displayed, your business details are available once the padlock is clicked.
