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Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
- modeless 1y agoWhat purpose does "deactivating" any serve?
- Retr0id 1y agoPresumably, saving disk space on some google servers.
- dietr1ch 1y agoMore than disk space I think they care about having short links, higher cache hit rates and saving RAM on their fleet.
- Retr0id 1y agoIf they really are only purging the inactive ones, this shouldn't impact cache hit rate much.
- smaudet 1y agoI find even this incredibly stingy... Back of the envelope: 1043*1000000000 / (1023^3) 10 4 byte characters times 3 billion links, dividing by 1 GB of memory... Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant. To put that into perspective, my Desktop Computer's max Mobo memory is 128 GB, so saying it has to do with RAM is like saying they needed to shut off a couple servers...and save like maybe a thousand dollars. This reeks of something else, if not just sheer ineptitude...
- dietr1ch 1y ago> Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant. You are forgetting job replication. A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters. Saving 111TiB of RAM can probably pay your salary forever. I think I paid mine with fewer savings while there. During covid there was a RAM shortage too enough to have a call to prefer trading CPU to save RAM with changes to the rule of thumb resource costs.
- nomel 1y ago> A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters. There's obviously, something in between maintaining the latency with 20 datacenter, increasing the latency a bit reducing hosting to a couple $100 worth of servers, and setting the latency to infinity, which was the original plan.
- dietr1ch 1y agoI'm guessing that they ran out of leeway with small tweaks and found that breaking inactive links was probably a better way out. We don't know the hit rates of what they call inactive nor the real cost it takes to keep them around. A service like this is probably on maintenance mode too, so simplifying it to use fewer resources probably makes sense, and I bet the PMs are happy about shorter links, since at some point you are better off not using a link shortener and instead just use a QR code in fear of inconvenience and typos.
- 18172828286177 1y ago[flagged]
- zarzavat 1y agoDo PMs at Google have so much power that they can shut down a product used by billions of people?
- afavour 1y agoThey’re not shutting down a product, they’re removing old links. I’m not defending it, just that I can absolutely imagine Google PMs making a chart of “$ saved vs clicks” and everyone slapping each other on the back and saying good job well done.
- deelowe 1y agoThey can write the proposals to do so and if it gets picked up by a VP and approved, then they can cite that on their promo.
- OutOfHere 1y agoThe product was shut down a long time ago. They're now deleting inactive data of users.
- BoredPositron 1y agoIncreasing database ops.
- maven29 1y agoA warning shot to guard against an AT&T Bell-style forced divestiture?
- imchillyb 1y agoI believe this is the simplest and most succinct answer given the current anti monopoly climate the courts and prosecutors have.
- mystifyingpoi 1y agoIt creates a good entry in the promo package for that Google manager. "Successfully conducted cost saving measure, cutting down the spend on the link shortener service by 70%". Of course, hoping that no one will check the actual numbers.
- MajimasEyepatch 1y agoIt may help prevent linkjacking. If an old URL no longer works, but the goo.gl link is still available, it's possible that someone could take over the URL and use it for malicious. Consider a scenario like this: 1. Years ago, Acme Corp sets up an FAQ page and creates a goo.gl link to the FAQ. 2. Acme goes out of business. They take the website down, but the goo.gl link is still accessible on some old third-party content, like social media posts. 3. Eventually, the domain registration lapses, and a bad actor takes over the domain. 4. Someone stumbles across a goo.gl link in a reddit thread from a decade ago and clicks it. Instead of going to Acme, they now go to a malicious site full of malware. With the new policy, if enough time has passed without anyone clicking on the link, then Google will deactivate it, and the user in step 4 would now get a 404 from Google instead.
- dundarious 1y agoIn this little story, what's the difference if the direct ACME URL was used? What does the goo.gl indirection have to do with anything?
- xp84 1y agoGoo.gl was a terrible idea in the first place because it lends Google's apparent legitimacy (in the eyes of the average "noob") to unmoderated content that could be malicious. That's probably why they at least stopped allowing new ones to be made. By allowing old ones, they can't rule out the Google brand being used to scam and phish. e.g. Imagine SMS or email saying "We've received your request to delete your Google account effective (insert 1 hour's time). To cancel your request, just click here and log into your account: https://goo.gl/ASDFjkl https://goo.gl/ASDFjkl This was a very popular strategy for phishing and it's still possible if you can find old links that go to hosts that are NXDOMAIN and unregistered, of which there are no doubt millions.
- NewJazz 1y agoYeah I'm pretty sure this is the main reason google is shutting the service down. They don't want their brand tainted by phishing attempts.
- AlienRobot 1y agoI'll never use a URL shortener again.
- purplecats 1y agocould host your own
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoI use pinboard.in. Also pay the $20/yr for archiving if the links rot https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/
- duskwuff 1y agoPinboard isn't a URL shortener.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agodub.sh comes to my mind
- Symbiote 1y agoI set one up at work using https://shlink.io/ https://shlink.io/ As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
- rs186 1y agoIf you make it read-only, maybe. If anyone can generate a link, wait for your hosting provider to shout at you and ask why there is so much spam/illegal content with your domain. The you realize you can't actually manage a service like this.
- cestith 1y agoI used to work for a company that ran our own. It required authentication to add a new URL, and only employees had that.
- jasonpeacock 1y agoWhat amazes me is that this wasn't the original plan. What product manager thinks "the best thing for our customers is to delete their data!". > We understand these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts and more, and we appreciate the input received. How did they think the links were being used?
- borg16 1y agoi read in an earlier thread for this on HN - "this is a classic example of data driven product decision" aka we can reduce costs by $x if we just stopped goo.gl links. Instead of actually wondering how this would impact the customers. Also helps that they are in a culture which does not mind killing services on a whim.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoIf companies can spend billions on AI and not have anything in return and be okay with that in the ways of giving free stuff (okay, I'll admit not completely free since you are the product but still free) Then they should also be okay for keeping the goo.gl links honestly. Sounds kinda bad for some good will but this is literally google, the one thing google is notorious for is killing their products.
- citizenpaul 1y agoThis is basically modern SV business. This old data is costing us about a million a year to hold onto. KILL IT NOW WITH FIRE. Hey lets also dump 100 Billion dollars into this AI thing without any business plan or ideas to back it up this year. HOW FAST CAN YOU ACCEPT MY CHECK!
- jiggawatts 1y agoNobody wants to catch a falling knife, everybody wants to attach a lanyard to the moon rocket.
- Aurornis 1y ago
- nsksl 1y agoI don't understand. For you to see the message, you have to click on the link. Your clicking on the link must mean that the link is active, since it is getting clicks. So why is the link being deactivated for being inactive?
- wetpaws 1y ago[dead]
- lathiat 1y agoIf I had to guess it is possibly something to do with fighting crawlers/bots/etc triggering the detection? And running some kind of more advanced logic to try ensure it's really being used. Light captcha style. But just a guess.
- moebrowne 1y agoArchive Warrior is actively scanning all links to try and preserve them. 2.5 billion have been processed at the time of writing https://tracker.archiveteam.org/goo-gl/ https://tracker.archiveteam.org/goo-gl/
- skybrian 1y ago> showed no activity in late 2024 Apparently they measured it once by running a map-reduce or equivalent. I don’t see why they couldn’t measure it again. Maybe they don’t want it to be gamed, but why?
- poyu 1y agoI interpreted "inactive" as the link that the shortener is linking to is not responding.
- OutOfHere 1y agoNo. Inactive means that the short URL hasn't been accessed in a while.
- shuuji3 1y agoBy running ArchiveTeam Warrior workers, you can help archive links to Internet Archive. See details in the previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684119
- dang 1y agoRelated. Others? Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683481 - July 2025 (219 comments) Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40998549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40998549 - July 2024 (49 comments)
- neilv 1y ago"Actively used" criteria scrods that critical old document you found, in which someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link. Not knowing all the details motivating this surprising decision, from the outside, I'd expect this to be an easy "Don't Be Evil" call: "If we don't want to make new links, we can stop taking them (with advance warning, for any automation clients). But we mustn't throw away this information that was entrusted to us, and must keep it organized/accessible. We're Google. We can do it. Oddly, maybe even with less effort than shutting it down would take."
- inetknght 1y ago> someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link. That someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.
- progval 1y agoHindsight is 20/20. Google was considered by geeks to be a very reliable company at some point.
- wolrah 1y agoUsing a link shortener for any kind of long-term link, no matter who hosts it, has never been a good idea. They're for ephemeral links shared over limited mediums like SMS or where a human would have to manually copy the link from the medium to the browsing device like a TV ad. If you put one in a document intended for digital consumption you've already screwed up.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI am constantly annoyed at O’Reilly and similar book vendors which seem to have a policy that all links should go through a shortener.
- CydeWeys 1y agoLink shorteners are old enough that likely more URLs that were targeted by link shorteners have rotted away than have link shorteners themselves. Go look at a decade+ old webpage. So many of the links to specific resources (as in, not just a link to a domain name with no path) simply don't work anymore.
- jjice 1y agoI would've imagined that the good will (or more likely, the lack of bad will) from _not_ doing this would've been worth the cost, considering I can't imagine this has high costs to run.
- yandie 1y agoThey probably saved the equivalent of an engineer's salary!!
- quink 1y agoAnd for an encore, I guess they'll start tearing out random pages in the books I didn't happen to read last August?
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoNoticed recently on some google properties where there are Share buttons that it's generating https://share.google https://share.google links now instead of goo.gl. Is that the same shortening platform running it? And also does this have something to do with the .gl TLD? Greenland? A redirect to share.google would be fine
- ewoodrich 1y agoThe key difference is share.google, as you mentioned, is for Google controlled properties whereas goo.gl allowed shortening any arbitrary user provided URL. Which opened up a giant can of worms with Google implicitly lending its brand credibility to any URL used by a scammer, phisher or attacker.
- charlesabarnes 1y agoYou can generate share.google links on chrome for any arbitrary url.
- ewoodrich 1y agoHow? I just tried each of the Share options for this thread in the desktop Share menu, and they all used the full URL. Including the QR code which I verified by saving as a PNG and scanning it outside of any Google app. I also haven't found any Share option in the iOS app either that doesn't use the full URL. But harder to test on mobile given the various permutations of sharing between random apps.
- charlesabarnes 1y agoSorry, may be wrong about chrome, but you can definitely do it in the Google app on Android. I just disabled the setting recently. Here's a link to a Reddit thread talking about the feature https://share.google/GlkbFpGznyLszpoyc https://share.google/GlkbFpGznyLszpoyc
- hk1337 1y agoYet another google product put to the chopping block. If products were people, they'd have a lot of blood on their hands.
- TZubiri 1y agoNext step, deprecate those ridiculous forms.gle links that just train users to ignore domain names.
- xp84 1y agoI am pretty sure the terrible idea of putting the Google brand on something that can so easily be used for phishing is the reason they deprecated it in the first place. They should have used something without obvious branding.
- mixdup 1y agoI'm sure there's some level of security implication, but maybe they could also archive the database of redirect with Archive.org or just release it
- alliao 1y agooh google, please get your mojo back this is correct
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoJesus, do not rely on Google for anything.
- alpb 1y agoThis whole thing has 0 cost to Google to run. They could be nice citizens and continue to provide this service for free, but they chose to not to.
- beanjuiceII 1y agoi am not even sure what you can trust this company for anymore
- Uehreka 1y ago“COOL URLS DON’T CHANGE! COOL URLS DON’T CHANGE!!” I continue to insist as I slowly shorten and turn into a bit.ly
- atoav 1y agoReaching a measurable reduction in cost by commiting a immeasurable breach of customer trust. Seems to be a repeating pattern over there at google. I for one would think twice to rely too much on any of their services.
- hoherd 1y agoThis is pretty similar to what github did with git.io https://github.blog/changelog/2022-04-25-git-io-deprecation/ https://github.blog/changelog/2022-04-25-git-io-deprecation/
- b112 1y agoIt's like they don't get it. As if they're incapable of understanding. Inactive links? There is no such thing. Research papers written a decade ago, you read, and want to click. Now you cannot, unless the data is popular. If they're keeping the service alive, then keep it alive.
- KyleBerezin 1y agoThis reminds me of when google deleted my entire timeline (and broke the photo integration feature) to save some pennies. This is despite the fact I am a google one subscriber and have hundreds of gigabytes free. They sent me a couple of emails as warning to a gmail address I don't use, and nothing to the primary email address associated with the account. I hope they are happy with their nickles, because they lost a $1000+ a year subscriber over it.