101–110 of 194 posts
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One wonders why they don't, instead of showing down, display a 15s interstitial unskippable YouTube-style ad prior to redirecting. That way they'll make money, and they can fund the service not having to shut down, and there isn't any linkrot.
This is such an evil idea.
What amazes me is that this wasn't the original plan. What product manager thinks "the best thing for our customers is to delete their data!". > We understand these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts and more, and we appreciate the input received. How did they think the links were being used?
> How did they think the links were being used? Can't dig this document up right now, but in their Chrome dev process they say something along these lines: "even if a ferie is used by 0.01% of users, at scale that's a lot of users . Don't remove until you've made solely due impost is negligible". At Google scale I'm surprised [1] this is not applied everywhere. [1] Well, not that surprised
I'll never use a URL shortener again.
"I'll never use a URL shortener again." I don't know if anyone should use a URL shortener or not ... but if you do ... "Oh By"[1] will be around in thirty years. Links will not be "purged". Users won't be tracked. Ads won't be served. [1] https://0x.co
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In this little story, what's the difference if the direct ACME URL was used? What does the goo.gl indirection have to do with anything?
Goo.gl was a terrible idea in the first place because it lends Google's apparent legitimacy (in the eyes of the average "noob") to unmoderated content that could be malicious. That's probably why they at least stopped allowing new ones to be made. By allowing old ones, they can't rule out the Google brand being used to scam and phish. e.g. Imagine SMS or email saying "We've received your request to delete your Google…
Noticed recently on some google properties where there are Share buttons that it's generating https://share.google links now instead of goo.gl. Is that the same shortening platform running it? And also does this have something to do with the .gl TLD? Greenland? A redirect to share.google would be fine
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How much of a burden could this really be? The nature of something like this is that the cost to run it naturally goes down over time. Old links get clicked less so the hardware costs would be basically nothing. As for the actual software security, it's a URL shortener. They could rewrite the entire thing in almost no time with just a single dev. Especially since it's strictly hosting static links at this point. It p…
"How much of a burden could this really be?" My understanding from conversations I've seen about Google Reader is that the problem with Google is that every few years they have a new wave of infrastructure, which necessitates upgrading a bunch of things about all of their products. I guess that might be things like some new version of BigTable or whatever coming along, so you need to migrate everything from the previ…
Noticed recently on some google properties where there are Share buttons that it's generating https://share.google links now instead of goo.gl. Is that the same shortening platform running it? And also does this have something to do with the .gl TLD? Greenland? A redirect to share.google would be fine
The key difference is share.google, as you mentioned, is for Google controlled properties whereas goo.gl allowed shortening any arbitrary user provided URL. Which opened up a giant can of worms with Google implicitly lending its brand credibility to any URL used by a scammer, phisher or attacker.
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i read in an earlier thread for this on HN - "this is a classic example of data driven product decision" aka we can reduce costs by $x if we just stopped goo.gl links. Instead of actually wondering how this would impact the customers. Also helps that they are in a culture which does not mind killing services on a whim.
The Google URL shortener stopped accepting new links around 2018. It has been deprecated for a long time. I doubt it was a cost-driven decision on the basis of running the servers. My guess would be that it was a security and maintenance burden that nobody wanted. They also might have wanted to use the domain for something else.
Edit: nevermind, I had no idea Dynamic Links is deprecated and will be shutting down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i read in an earlier thread for this on HN - "this is a classic example of data driven product decision" aka we can reduce costs by $x if we just stopped goo.gl links. Instead of actually wondering how this would impact the customers. Also helps that they are in a culture which does not mind killing services on a whim.
The Google URL shortener stopped accepting new links around 2018. It has been deprecated for a long time. I doubt it was a cost-driven decision on the basis of running the servers. My guess would be that it was a security and maintenance burden that nobody wanted. They also might have wanted to use the domain for something else.