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The latest version of Google Chrome (Chrome 63) will redirect any domain that ends in .dev and .foo to an https URL automatically. It sounds like Google felt they could do this since they bought the entire .dev and .foo global top-level domains (gTLD).
I joke complained about this on Twitter before, but it seems like my Chrome finally auto-updated to version 63 in the past few days. A handful of important web applications I run directly on my computer, plus almost all my client dev sites, stopped working. It’s not hard to pick a different gTLD and change the sites to use them (or, perhaps, setup HTTPS for my dev server and add a new cert to Chrome), but it is the sort of IT drudgery that nobody likes doing.
When I was looking for a way to undo this I stumbled across this article from the register which dug up the language Google used when proposing its purchase of the .dev gTLD
“The proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association to the term ‘dev’, which is an abbreviation of the word ‘development’. The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact second-level domains specific to its projects in development.”
If I’m reading that right (and if it’s accurate — gTLD applications don’t seem to be easily Googleable and there are some hints that Google might offer .dev domains to the public), it sounds like Google itself uses .dev for projects-in-develoment. So, from a certain point of view, anyone who uses .dev and Chrome is suffering death-by-1000-configurations because of an internal-to-Google descision to force their teams to suport HTTPS.
All in all though, another small reason to give the latest Firefox a try.