Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
1–10 of 236 posts
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#2About 60k academic citations about to die - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=90&q=%22https://goo...
Countless books with irrevocably broken references - https://www.google.com/search?q=%22://goo.gl%22&sca_upv=1&sc...
And for what? The cost of keeping a few TB online and a little bit of CPU power?
An absolute act of cultural vandalism.
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#3From the blog post: "more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month"
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-li...
This is a classic product data decision-making fallacy. The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#4ArchiveTeam is trying to brute force the entire URL space before its too late. You can run a Virtualbox VM/docker image (ArchiveTeam Warrior) to help (unique IPs are needed). I've been running it for a couple months and found a million.
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#5What will it really cost for Google (each year) to host whatever was created, as static files, for as long as possible?
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#6I have only given this a moment's thought, but why not just publish the URL map as a text file or SQLLite DB? So at least we know where they went? I don't think it would be a privacy issue since the links are all public?
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#7The runner of Compiler Explorer tried to collect the public shortlinks and do the redirection themselves:
Compiler Explorer and the Promise of URLs That Last Forever (May 2025, 357 points, 189 comments)
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#8From the blog post: "more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month" https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-li... This is a classic product data decision-making fallacy. The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".
> The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".
Yes, but it doesn't bring in the sweet promotion home, unfortunately. Ironically, if 99% of them doesn't see any traffic, you can scale back the infra, run it in 2 VMs, and make sure a single person can keep it up as a side quest, just for fun (but, of course, pay them for their work).
This beancounting really makes me sad.
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#9I have only given this a moment's thought, but why not just publish the URL map as a text file or SQLLite DB? So at least we know where they went? I don't think it would be a privacy issue since the links are all public?
Are they all public? Where can I see them?
Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month
#10About 60k academic citations about to die - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=90&q=%22https://goo... Countless books with irrevocably broken references - https://www.google.com/search?q=%22://goo.gl%22&sca_upv=1&sc... And for what? The cost of keeping a few TB online and a little bit of CPU power? An absolute act of cultural vandalism.
The vandalism was relying on Google.