- cross-posted to:
- technology@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- technology@hexbear.net
#killedbygoogle
- Google’s URL shortening service goo.gl links will stop working on August 25th, 2025, resulting in 404 errors.
- Starting August 23rd, 2024, goo.gl links will show an interstitial page warning users of the upcoming shutdown.
- Google initially suggested migrating to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL), which has also since been deprecated.
I’m sure many people chose this one over other shortners because they assumed it would outlast the others. 🤦♀️
So many links are going to go dead because of this. I’m sure plenty of software out there used this to automatically shorten links for posting on social media etc.
So many chunks of internet history is going straight to the bin thanks to this.
Remember: never trust google
Archive.org offering to step in and help if google will hand over the domain and db
Which they probably won’t…
Of course not. Google would never give up that domain. Especially not if there is no money in it for them.
Virgin Google vs Chad Archive.org
They didn’t find a profitable way to put ads in the shortening service
There it is
Good! Sick of link shorteners, 99% of the time I’ve seen them used it’s for tracking and/or disguising the true destination.
It was cool back when there were valid reasons for character limitations. But I agree, url obfuscation was often used for less savory reasons.
And I’m not sure how shorteners work for Firefox’s tracking removal, but I’m guessing not well.
If they just released the db, I think there are be many who’d be happy to host the service. But knowing Google, they probably won’t do shit.
That could probably cause more trouble that it’s worth.
The Internet Archive could archive them forever.
Archiveteam has had a project trying to archive all of them they’ve seen for a few years now. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam
How would that work if Google could the domain? Or are you saying they’d release the domain as well?
I don’t expect that. It should be trivial to have a redirect addon.
Noticed that in Apple’s iOS Shortcuts Gallery they featured a shortcut that uses v.gd or is.gd - apparently both run by an ISP, Memset.
Cloud hosting company Memset this morning [April 26, 2010] announced that it has agreed to acquire URL shortening service Is.gd. Memset in a statement says it has thus secured the URL shortener’s future, and added that it plans to maintain it as a non-advertising-supported, free Internet service indefinitely.
Good Guy Memset. Must be tons of hassle given the spam/fraud.
Google is turning into a blackhole.
URL lengthening will continue as planned.
Wait, people outside Google were allowed to use it? Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in the wild.
It has long been discontinued(in 2018) but they still supported existing URLs.
Initially everybody could use them, then they just closed the service but the links kept working.
TIL Google had a URL shortener.