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Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available
- mncsz 2y ago[flagged]
- hsag 2y ago[dead]
- NelsonMinar 2y agoLate to the discussion but as a former Googler I'm embarrassed for the company they didn't figure out a way to keep these working forever. They really just don't give a damn over there any more, do they? My dumb architecture suggestion for long term resilience: replace it all with absolutely static HTML files with a redirect in them in meta tags and Javascript (and HTML). Ugly but can be served forever on anything that can serve a web page.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoI guess it's time to post the perennial reminder that Cool URIs Don't Change: https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hackeratrandom 2y ago"We understand the transition away from using goo.gl short links may cause some inconvenience." ... Hum, ya ... Non tech people might have made lots of links in legacy internal doc's, email conversations and other reference maternal ... Maybe even a thing called "Paper" ;-)
- mcpar-land 2y agoSeriously? I can't imagine a service that just returns HTTP 301 is costing Google enough to warrant shutting it down. Just making a whole slew of links across the whole internet dead. Another cancelled google service on the pile, I guess.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoIt probably was identified as a service that doesn't bring them enough or no money/benefit at all.
- netsharc 2y agoOne could probably write a browser extension that catches clicks on goo.gl/ URLs and queries a web backend for the original URL (a backend that needs to be filled with the original short-to-full URL mapping , and so preserve the ugliness. And since we're all obsessed about money, one could put a 5 second ad before doing the actual redirect, and offer a pro subscription for redirects for many bucks a month...
- NavinF 2y ago> And since we're all obsessed about money Would ads on a service like this even pay the $5/mo VPS bill? Serious question.
- DataDaemon 2y agoThis is not the same Google anymore...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 2y agoWhere have you been for 15 years?
- fragmede 2y agoWhat happened in 2009?
- acdha 2y agoA little earlier: the DoubleClick merger happened in 2007 and it took a little time for the ad guys to end up running everything, coincidentally also marking the end of their ability to launch a successful product.
- taftster 2y agoDo you think the 2008 financial crisis had anything to do with it too? Like at that point, it was all focus on money, no focus on pet projects?
- acdha 2y agoI’m sure it was related - everyone got really focused on the bottom line then – but I think they also had the problem that ads were so successful that it became hard to even consider other models because ads just instantly generate money, and a lot of their attention seemed to focus on that sit-and-consume model rather than, say, getting serious about building tools people would subscribe to. G-Suite is kind of sad that way because there was some cool technology and initial goodwill but they just kind of coasted and slowly gave the market away to Microsoft, I think because the fountain of ad dollars meant nobody was worried about their bonus being cancelled or their shares going down significantly.
- robcohen 2y agoFrom a security perspective, this is a good idea. People intuitively trust Google links. URL shorteners hide what you're clicking on. Sometimes even informed people click on links.
- o11c 2y agoI remember a war between Users and IT - the shitty CMS everybody used had a crazy-small limit for links, so people wanted to use URL shorteners, which then got blocked for security reasons ...
- TRiG_Ireland 2y agoDo non-technical people think of `goo.gl` as Google?
- unsupp0rted 2y agoYes. And non-technical people don’t know that goo.gl is a URL. Only that it looks like the word Google and Google is official, so this is fine.
- Dylan16807 2y agoWell if it's someone that would be fooled by google-site.com then you don't really help them by shutting down goo.gl in particular.
- cuteboy19 2y agoin a sense having goo.gl be legitimate only serves to legitimize google-site.com additionally we should tar and feather whoever came up with akams
- aitchnyu 2y agoAlso that youtu.be is Youtube.
- aitchnyu 2y ago
- jasonvorhe 2y agoHow much would it cost Google to just keep a few hundred webserver replicas running on some Borg cluster somewhere that do nothing but match and redirect incoming requests to their destinations for a few more years? Am I underestimating the complexity of this at Google's scale?
- paulpauper 2y agoagree. a redirect costs nothing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Avamander 2y agoTo be honest all URL redirectors should be killed with fire. I loathe all the "safelinks" and similar crap in emails. Absolutely awful practice with long-lasting effects.
- Suppafly 2y agomy company blocks most shorteners, which make a lot of normal browsing just not work correctly due to how many sites use them now.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoMore than $0. There is no consequence to turn down (and sunk cost of labor doing the work), cost to keep running is above $0. If the argument is good will, the value of good will to current state Google appears to be $0. Throw a few dollars at the Internet Archive [1], ask ArchiveTeam to add the Google link shortener to the Warrior archiver [2] [3], understand why to avoid Google in the future. [1] https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate [2] https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Warrior_projects https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Warrior_projects [3] https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam (Google DGAF about anything that doesn't make money anymore; support public goods that actually GAF)
- CM30 2y agoAnother one for the Google Graveyard I guess. Feels like everything outside of a few core products is either being shut down or abandoned these days...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lifestyleguru 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoNormally a product shutdown has a contained set of affected users, but this (incredibly computationally simple) service getting turned off will linkrot a noticeable fraction of the internet. This is shittier than usual.
- jrochkind1 2y agoThe original 2018 announcement they link to said: > While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination. And > After March 30, 2019, all links will continue to redirect to the intended destination. [Emphasis in original, in bold!] It is hard to read this as anything but saying the continued serving of redirects will _not_ eventually sunset, right? While most features will eventually sunset, all existing links are not most features, and will continue to redirect. Clearly they changed their mind. I mean, it's not shocking, especially from Google. It would be decent and transparent of them to admit it though. Yeah, we said that we were going to continue to redirect existing links, we changed our mind, sorry about that.
- voisin 2y ago> It would be decent and transparent of them This is Google we’re talking about. I think at this point they are institutionally committed to the notion that their users ought not trust them to keep services going and if they do, then shame on the user.
- basch 2y agoDid they tell the google maps team? If I open the mobile app, click a pin, and press share, I get a maps.app.goo.gl link Will this break every map ever shared?
- steventey 2y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y agoWhy?
- jujube3 2y ago[flagged]
- aitchnyu 2y agoI remember when Tweeple were inventing hashtags and retweets in Twitter textboxes, bit.ly was the saviour that prevented url deadweight taking up our precious 140 characters. If 2010 Twitter allowed [markdown urls](https://example.com/longlonglonglonglonglonglonglongurl https://example.com/longlonglonglonglonglonglonglongurl) and counted only the visible words, maybe the entire link shortener industry would have died off.
- lostmsu 2y agoI guess googlers can't really design a reliable link shortener after all.
- bofh23 2y agoCritical article from Apr 2009: on url shorteners -- joshua schachter's blog http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners Print publishers might have a case for URL shorteners but they should own and maintain their own instead of a 3rd party service they can’t control or prevent from disappearing. Plenty of articles in the Communications of the ACM magazine use 3rd party shortened URLs and it’s unacceptable. They should know better and should host their own link shortener via their digital library system.
- pietroppeter 2y agojust out of curiosity I wanted to check whether I had some goo.gl links that I might want to migrate but apparently goo.gl now redirects to this announcement. Would be happy to know if there is a way to access goo.gl links created while logged in with my account.
- oslis 2y ago[flagged]