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Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

goo.gl

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Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#2
I guess I was just a little prescient back in 2011, when I wrote of URL-shortening services in a blog post, "let's not forget that these entities have a nasty tendency to vanish". Not that being prescient about the Big G end-of-lifing services is particularly visionary or difficult, tbh.

The post[1] was to publicise a small shortener I'd written for myself (Java/JSP solution) -- in many ways deficient and lacking all sorts of features (stats, UI) but it worked well enough for me for a time until I got lazy, got ill, and got rid of the server it was running on. But I was bang on-target about the likelihood of such things disappearing under the waves.

I guess it's time to dust it off[2], bring the codebase up to date and get it working again. I'm a bit doubtful about hosting it on, say... Google Compute free-tier or something... for who knows when /that/ service will get taken down.

[1] http://onemikro2nd.blogspot.co.za/2011/04/shrtn-url-shortene...

[2] https://bitbucket.org/mikro2nd/shrtn

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#3
post #2

I guess I was just a little prescient back in 2011, when I wrote of URL-shortening services in a blog post, "let's not forget that these entities have a nasty tendency to vanish". Not that being prescient about the Big G end-of-lifing services is particularly visionary or difficult, tbh. The post[1] was to publicise a small shortener I'd written for myself (Java/JSP solution) -- in many ways deficient and lacking all…

all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination.

It would be a PR nightmare for Google if they stopped redirecting existing links, but they won't do that as they're a huge user of the web graph as well.

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#6
post #5

I've recently came across a use case for an URL shortener (Entering long API calls on mobile devices) and was looking for a self-hosted solution. Any recommendations? (No public shortening service, only admins can create new shortcuts.)

Yourls is pretty good, I use it with Sharex (and Nextcloud) to quickly upload images to the internet.

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#7

"While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination." https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-goog...

I hope this doesn't change too. Felt I had to use it to link a humongous wikidata SPARQL query in a (software) research paper recently.

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#8
post #3
post #2

I guess I was just a little prescient back in 2011, when I wrote of URL-shortening services in a blog post, "let's not forget that these entities have a nasty tendency to vanish". Not that being prescient about the Big G end-of-lifing services is particularly visionary or difficult, tbh. The post[1] was to publicise a small shortener I'd written for myself (Java/JSP solution) -- in many ways deficient and lacking all…

all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination. It would be a PR nightmare for Google if they stopped redirecting existing links, but they won't do that as they're a huge user of the web graph as well.

Indeed, I saw that redirection will continue to work. It wasn't clear to me, though, whether any of the other stuff -- stats, particularly -- will continue to work.

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#9
post #5

I've recently came across a use case for an URL shortener (Entering long API calls on mobile devices) and was looking for a self-hosted solution. Any recommendations? (No public shortening service, only admins can create new shortcuts.)

I'm looking for a URL shortener that tells me how many users clicked the link.

Re: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service

#10
post #6
post #5

I've recently came across a use case for an URL shortener (Entering long API calls on mobile devices) and was looking for a self-hosted solution. Any recommendations? (No public shortening service, only admins can create new shortcuts.)

Yourls is pretty good, I use it with Sharex (and Nextcloud) to quickly upload images to the internet.

2nd for Yourls; easy to install and maintain.
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