Looks like this is happening across all the OS and all chrome versions. Clicking the Welcome page under most visited section of the new tab page, is redirecting to Errror 404 page.

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That's not a navigation bug-- the URL is actually a 404.  Sounds like the server side might have changed, and we don't have a corresponding update to the URL Chrome links to?

rpop@: Do you know who to contact about this?

Hmm, that URL is the old FRE which should not be in use in stable. There is a website migration happening that is probably the cause of this. +charles to investigate both issues.

Thanks folks for flagging. Can confirm that this is a bug from the website migration. We deprecated the content on that site, but the expected behavior should lead to the chrome.com landing page. 

Our web team is on it and est to be fixed by EOD today. 

Hey folks, we have fixed that link/deprecated URLs to redirect to chorme.com. Thanks again for reporting. 

Hmm, I don't think the root of chrome.com (CTA: download chrome) makes sense in the context of Chrome first run in a most likely tile (see original report and comment #1). Charles, can you work with eng (ramya for NTP is a good place to start) and figure out if we can stop that from appearing, or replace it with our actual first run UX?

I'm not familiar with what the changes that caused this were, but the welcome URL shown when no other data is available (including upon first run) is http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/[GRITLANGCODE]/welcome.html, defined here : https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/app/resources/locale_settings.grd?l=190

Thanks Ramya. That page no longer exists; we should stop showing it when no data is available. 

Ah, the locale files that include IDS_CHROME_WELCOME_URL should be updated with whatever the replacement is, and we should probably also review the other default settings here: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/history/top_sites_factory.cc?l=59.

Thanks folks. 

1) There is no webpages that make sense put put on the NTP there. At that point, users should have already gone through the actual first run UX. 

2) My POV is that this position is not a good place to put welcome instruction in any case. I checked the analytics breifly, and for the URL on all locales we get ~700 page views a day (<0.01% of our daily traffic)

Recommendation: I suggest that we just remove that link on the NTP- my understanding is that most likely tiles will be replaced by web-app short-links in the new GM2 NTP anyway. 

@Ramya/Yana- do you agree? if so, can we work to remove the link if we believe it is a problem? 

I'll let Yana comment on the product side, but from an eng perspective, it looks fairly straightforward to remove the first pre-populated site (barring any gotchas where 2 pre-populated sites are expected). I assume we can keep the Webstore link for now?

Ramya - question for you. When you say, "remove the first pre-populated site", is there a way to make sure that this is always the "Welcome to Google Chrome" tile?

Yes, we'll explicitly remove IDS_CHROME_WELCOME_URL, which is the first item in this array: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/history/top_sites_factory.cc?l=59.

We'll want to do thorough testing to make sure nothing else depends on this being 2 tiles, but I suspect we'll be ok there.

Thanks Ramya and Yana! Any suggestions on next steps and timing? Thanks!

One thing I'd like to be clear on is the expected behavior when the the "Welcome to Google Chrome" tile is removed for (1) new profiles and (2) existing profiles that still feature the "Welcome to Google Chrome" tile on their MV list. Kristi can you take a look at this & document here? Thanks!

BTW Charles: is priority 1 / target 67 still accurate? 

Hey Ramaya, yes that is correct. My assumption is that for existing profiles the likelihood of NTP still featuring "Welcome to Google Chrome" tile is limited with a dynamic MV list. 

Agree with you there Charles. Kristi will confirm the exact behavior.

I removed the welcome page from the prepopulated list and tested how it effected local NTP.

1) For newly added profiles, the welcome page is not shown. This is the same for new instances of Chrome before the user signs in.
2) For existing profiles (signed in or not) that have the welcome page in their MV, the tile is shown without the thumbnail for a few seconds before disappearing when the MV list refreshes (see attached). The blank tile is still clickable and redirects the the download Chrome URL. Once the tile disappears, it does not return even after refreshing/restarting Chrome.

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Thanks for the update Kristi!

yyushkina@, cyflee@: The lack of a thumbnail for the Welcome Page (for a few seconds) on existing profiles seems like a minor UE issue to me, especially since I expect that not many users will have this in their list of 8 thumbnails. I think we should go ahead with the change.

Thanks Kristi! And I agree with Ramya. @Yana to give final LGTM as owner of NTP :) 

LGTM :)

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7

commit 9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7
Author: kristipark <kristipark@chromium.org>
Date: Tue Apr 17 17:59:41 2018

Remove welcome page from pre-populated Most Visited

The URL is incorrect due to the welcome page migration (it currently redirects to chrome.com). Also, users have already been through the first run UX, so the welcome page is not really needed.

Bug:  824038 
Change-Id: I739e920e2fd4f4498226a04e162b29f2ed1011c7
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/1006186
Commit-Queue: Kristi Park <kristipark@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Marc Treib <treib@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: agrieve <agrieve@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Mitsuru Oshima <oshima@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Sylvain Defresne <sdefresne@chromium.org>
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#551388}
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/app/chromium_strings.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/app/google_chrome_strings.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/app/resources/locale_settings.grd
[delete] https://crrev.com/7bd301efb5f8baaceeb66e9268772a65b7218163/chrome/app/theme/default_100_percent/common/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[delete] https://crrev.com/7bd301efb5f8baaceeb66e9268772a65b7218163/chrome/app/theme/default_100_percent/cros/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[delete] https://crrev.com/7bd301efb5f8baaceeb66e9268772a65b7218163/chrome/app/theme/default_200_percent/cros/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/app/theme/theme_resources.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/browser/history/top_sites_factory.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7/chrome/browser/ui/search/local_ntp_browsertest.cc

Verified that the fix is working in the latest Canary. Requesting merge approval for M67.

This bug requires manual review: There is .grd file changes and we are only 40 days from stable.
Please contact the milestone owner if you have questions.
Owners: cmasso@(Android), cmasso@(iOS), kbleicher@(ChromeOS), govind@(Desktop)

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

This bug has been exists since M-60 also CL listed at #23 includes string change (.grd) and string freeze for M67 was on March 30th. Could you pls clarify why this is critical to merge to M67 and can't wait till M68?

Approving merge to M67 branch 3396 based on offline chat with ramyan@ and 	yyushkina@. Pls merge ASAP. Thank you.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4

commit d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4
Author: kristipark <kristipark@chromium.org>
Date: Wed Apr 18 21:35:40 2018

Remove welcome page from pre-populated Most Visited

Merge to release branch 3396.

The URL is incorrect due to the welcome page migration (it currently redirects to chrome.com). Also, users have already been through the first run UX, so the welcome page is not really needed.

(cherry picked from commit 9c11f4dbfe0886b9e685b58a526895fe2eb836e7)

Bug:  824038 
Change-Id: I739e920e2fd4f4498226a04e162b29f2ed1011c7
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/1006186
Commit-Queue: Kristi Park <kristipark@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Marc Treib <treib@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: agrieve <agrieve@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Mitsuru Oshima <oshima@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Sylvain Defresne <sdefresne@chromium.org>
Cr-Original-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#551388}
Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/1017863
Reviewed-by: Mathieu Perreault <mathp@chromium.org>
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/branch-heads/3396@{#106}
Cr-Branched-From: 9ef2aa869bc7bc0c089e255d698cca6e47d6b038-refs/heads/master@{#550428}
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/app/chromium_strings.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/app/google_chrome_strings.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/app/resources/locale_settings.grd
[delete] https://crrev.com/68ff2fb67bc03423e55b9cde910e65c8da1d390e/chrome/app/theme/default_100_percent/common/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[delete] https://crrev.com/68ff2fb67bc03423e55b9cde910e65c8da1d390e/chrome/app/theme/default_100_percent/cros/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[delete] https://crrev.com/68ff2fb67bc03423e55b9cde910e65c8da1d390e/chrome/app/theme/default_200_percent/cros/ntp_welcome_thumb.png
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/app/theme/theme_resources.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/browser/history/top_sites_factory.cc
[modify] https://crrev.com/d45d7b12808cad7d8480041a4d1f01a16cc810a4/chrome/browser/ui/search/local_ntp_browsertest.cc