Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved

Post by JimDabell » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 2:45 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #41

borg16 wrote: post #18

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.

Post by cbarrick » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:02 AM UTC

dangus wrote: post #152

Aurornis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the problem with URL shorteners like Google’s that includes the company name is that to the layperson there is possibly an implied level of safety. Here is a service that basically makes Google $0 and confuses a non-zero amount of non-technical users when it sends them to a scam website. Also, in the age of OCR on every device they make basically no sense. You can take a picture of a long URL on a piece of pa…

Post by mattmaroon » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:40 AM UTC

dundarious wrote: post #87

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may help prevent linkjacking. If an old URL no longer works, but the goo.gl link is still available, it's possible that someone could take over the URL and use it for malicious. Consider a scenario like this: 1. Years ago, Acme Corp sets up an FAQ page and creates a goo.gl link to the FAQ. 2. Acme goes out of business. They take the website down, but the goo.gl link is still accessible on some old third-party cont…

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?

Post by hirsin » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:42 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #132

neilv wrote: post #42

"Actively used" criteria scrods that critical old document you found, in which someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link. Not knowing all the details motivating this surprising decision, from the outside, I'd expect this to be an easy "Don't Be Evil" call: "If we don't want to make new links, we can stop taking them (with advance warning, for any automation clients). But we mustn't throw away this information…

> Oddly, maybe even with less effort than shutting it down would take. Google has a number of internal processes that effectively make it impossible to run legacy code without an engineering team just to integrate breaking upstream API changes, of which there are many. Imagine Google as an OS, and every few years you need to upgrade from, say, Google 8 to Google 9, and there's zero API or ABI stability so you have to…

Post by rohit89 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 5:19 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #92

cogman10 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…