window.open() simply adds the url to my current url

You wanted to access the root document of server www.google.com, which is done using the url https://www.google.com/. You provided a relative url for document www.google.com instead.

Keep in mind that window.open accepts both relative and absolute urls, so it can’t assume you left out https:// as it does when you use www.google.com in the address bar.


Maybe an example will help. Say the current page is http://www.example.com/dir/foo.html.

  • window.open("popup.html", "_blank") opens
    http://www.example.com/dir/popup.html.
  • window.open("www.google.com", "_blank") therefore opens
    http://www.example.com/dir/www.google.com.

The browser has no way of knowing you actually wanted https://www.google.com/ when you said you wanted http://www.example.com/dir/www.google.com since the latter could be valid.

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