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It would seem that, for isntance. tinyurl.com has ads on the homepage. The service probably costs close to $0 to run so any upside is profit.
by markat2 18y ago
It would seem that, for isntance. tinyurl.com has ads on the homepage.
The service probably costs close to $0 to run so any upside is profit.
- gaius 18y agoHow? It may need little CPU or bandwidth, but at the end of the day it's hardware, it needs to be somewhere, be powered and cooled, etc etc. The cost may be low enough to be paid by the owner personally, but it's not going to be $0.
- m_eiman 18y agoLike someone else said, the load is low enough to run on dirt cheap shared hosting like Dreamhost. So even if the cost isn't zero, it's less than what most people spend on snacks.
- redrobot5050 18y agoIt could be free if it was written on AppEngine, and it stayed within the "free" quota. (For the record I know TinyURL.com was not, but i'm pointing out that a newer/similar service could be.)
- mikeyur 18y agoIt costs a bit more than $0. So many people use the service, every long url on twitter is automatically shortened with the service. I think they have at least a single dedicated server, if not more. So definitely not $0, perhaps a couple hundred bucks which is made up with google ads.