5 ms·

One failure does not a trend make. If another service flops in the next few months, then yes I agree, the house of cards is collapsing, but right now that stat

One failure does not a trend make. If another service flops in the next few months, then yes I agree, the house of cards is collapsing, but right now that statement is a little premature.

tlrobinson 17y ago
It's inevitable, whether it's in the next few months or in 5 years, we're going to end up with millions of broken links.
- palish 17y ago
  Oh no! ... I'm sure we'll survive.
- iheartmemcache 17y ago
  Broken links have been happening since the web began. Any time you've made any web request, there's been a SPOF(1). In fact, think back to 2002-- remember when a good number of links you'd click were dead? When was the last time in recent memory you've had that happen? In fact, I argue that the web has a lower percentage of broken links today than back in the day. In 5 years, we'll likely have even less. (1) Yeah yeah, I know, a drastic over simplification. There's Foundry LB hardware, round-robin DNS at different sites, BGP failover, etc.
  - lyime 17y ago
    Sure, the percentage might decrease. But only because the number of total links are increasing by a ton.
  - pj 17y ago
    broken links in the past were the result of actions of the creator of the content, however, in the case of url shorteners, the broken links are pointing to content that still exists, in the same place it was when the link was created. There's a big difference betwen that an the broken links since the web began...
  - rjurney 17y ago
    This is a problem google can solve pretty easily, isn't it? They've indexed both sides of the link... so they can somehow 'heal' the broken link - right?
  - mseebach 17y ago
    > Any time you've made any web request, there's been a SPOF And when you make a request through a shortener, there are two independent SPOF's. Also, if you go to www.example.com/here/there/article and get a 404, you navigate up in the hierachy, and search for the content. If you get a 500 or server is down, you can try later. If either happens at the shortener-level, you're SOL.
joshu 17y ago
Lots of these services are failing. I found a huge list of them once and MORE THAN A THIRD were marked as "defunct"

One failure does not a trend make. If another service flops in the next few months, then yes I agree, the house of cards is collapsing, but right now that statement is a little premature.

tlrobinson 17y ago

It's inevitable, whether it's in the next few months or in 5 years, we're going to end up with millions of broken links.

palish 17y ago
Oh no! ... I'm sure we'll survive.
iheartmemcache 17y ago
Broken links have been happening since the web began. Any time you've made any web request, there's been a SPOF(1). In fact, think back to 2002-- remember when a good number of links you'd click were dead? When was the last time in recent memory you've had that happen? In fact, I argue that the web has a lower percentage of broken links today than back in the day. In 5 years, we'll likely have even less. (1) Yeah yeah, I know, a drastic over simplification. There's Foundry LB hardware, round-robin DNS at different sites, BGP failover, etc.
- lyime 17y ago
  Sure, the percentage might decrease. But only because the number of total links are increasing by a ton.
- pj 17y ago
  broken links in the past were the result of actions of the creator of the content, however, in the case of url shorteners, the broken links are pointing to content that still exists, in the same place it was when the link was created. There's a big difference betwen that an the broken links since the web began...
- rjurney 17y ago
  This is a problem google can solve pretty easily, isn't it? They've indexed both sides of the link... so they can somehow 'heal' the broken link - right?
- mseebach 17y ago
  > Any time you've made any web request, there's been a SPOF And when you make a request through a shortener, there are two independent SPOF's. Also, if you go to www.example.com/here/there/article and get a 404, you navigate up in the hierachy, and search for the content. If you get a 500 or server is down, you can try later. If either happens at the shortener-level, you're SOL.

joshu 17y ago

Lots of these services are failing. I found a huge list of them once and MORE THAN A THIRD were marked as "defunct"