Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#111

Post by sltkr » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

Alifatisk wrote: post #20

devrandoom wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they all public? Where can I see them?

I don't think so, but you can find the indexed urls here https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A"goo.gl" it's about 9,6 million links. And those are what got indexed, it should be way more out there

I'm surprised Google indexes these short links. I expected them to resolve them to their canonical URL and index that instead, which is what they usually do when multiple URLs point to the same resource.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#112

Post by nikanj » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

edent wrote: post #2

About 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 cost of dealing and supporting an old codebase instead of burning it all and releasing a written-from-scratch replacement next year

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#113

Post by crossroadsguy » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

edent wrote: post #2

About 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.

I have always struggled with this. If I buy a book I don’t want an online/URL reference in it. Put the book/author/isbn/page etc. Or refer to the magazine/newspaper/journal/issue/page/author/etc.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#114

Post by hinkley » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #101

hinkley wrote: post #82

What’s their body count now? Seems like they’ve slowed down the killing spree, but maybe it’s just that we got tired of talking about them.

297 https://killedbygoogle.com/

Oh look it’s been months since they killed a project!

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#115

Post by prophesi » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #103

prophesi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obfuscation may hint that it's intended to be private, but it's certainly not authentication. And the keyspace for these goog.le short URL's are much smaller than a 64byte alphanumeric code.

I'm not seeing why there's a clear line where GET cannot be authentication but POST can.

Because there isn't a line? You can require auth for any of those HTTP methods. Or not require auth for any of them.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#116

Post by nikanj » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

davidczech wrote: post #43

I don't really get it, it must cost peanuts to leave a static map like this up for the rest of Google's existence as a company.

There’s two things that are real torture to google dev teams: 1) Being told a product is completed and needs no new features or changes 2) Being made to work on legacy code

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#117

Post by BobaFloutist » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #113

edent wrote: post #2

About 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.

I have always struggled with this. If I buy a book I don’t want an online/URL reference in it. Put the book/author/isbn/page etc. Or refer to the magazine/newspaper/journal/issue/page/author/etc.

I mean preferably do both, right? The URL is better for however long it works.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#118

Post by fragmede » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

wobfan wrote: post #72

localtoast wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker container FTW. Thanks for the heads-up - this is a project I will happily throw a Hetzner server at.

Same here. I am geniunely asking myself for what though. I mean, they'll receive a list of the linked domains, but what will they do with that?

save it, forever*.

* as long as humanly possible, as is archive.org's mission.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#119

Post by lyu07282 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

edent wrote: post #46

bugsMarathon88 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Gosh! It is a pity Google doesn't hire any smart people who know how to build a throttling system. Still, they're a tiny and cash-starved company so we can't expect too much of them.

Its almost like as if once a company becomes this big, burning them to the ground would be better for society or something. That would be the liberal position on monopolies if they actually believed in anything.

Re: Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month

#120

Post by david422 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

Somewhat related - I wanted to add short urls to a project of mine. I was looking around at a bunch of url shorteners - and then realized it would be pretty simple to create my own. It's my content pointed to my own service, so I don't have to worry about 3rd party content or other services going down.