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

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

#161

Post by londons_explore »

cogman10 wrote: post #79
londons_explore wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concern is someone might scan all the inactive links and find that some of them link to secret URL's, leak design details about how things are built, link to documents shared 'anyone with the link' permission, etc.

> I think the concern is someone might scan all the inactive links How? Barring a database leak I don't see a way for someone to simply scan all the links. Putting something like Cloudflare in front of the shortener with a rate limit would prevent brute force scanning. I assume google semi-competently made the shortener (using a random number generator) which would make it pretty hard to find links in the first place…

To make the URLs actually short, you need to use most/all of the keyspace.

Back when it was made, shorteners were competing to see who could make the shortest URL, so I bet a brute force scan would find everything.

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

#162

Post by raybb »

shuuji3 wrote: post #20

By running ArchiveTeam Warrior workers, you can help archive links to Internet Archive. See details in the previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684119

Bummer they still don't support running on ARM computers (M1 Macs)

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

#163

Post by cyphar »

jerlam wrote: post #70
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.

Goo.gl didn't have customers, it had users. Customers pay , either with money or their personal data, now or the future. Goo.gl did not make any money or have a plan to do so in the future.

Which raises the obvious question -- why make a service that you know will eventually be shut down because of said economics. Especially one that (by design) will render many documents unusable when it is shut down.

While I generally find the "killed by Google" thing insanely short-sighted, this borders on straight-up negligence.

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

#164

Post by moebrowne »

lathiat wrote: post #16
nsksl wrote: post #11

I don't understand. For you to see the message, you have to click on the link. Your clicking on the link must mean that the link is active, since it is getting clicks. So why is the link being deactivated for being inactive?

If I had to guess it is possibly something to do with fighting crawlers/bots/etc triggering the detection? And running some kind of more advanced logic to try ensure it's really being used. Light captcha style. But just a guess.

Archive Warrior is actively scanning all links to try and preserve them. 2.5 billion have been processed at the time of writing

https://tracker.archiveteam.org/goo-gl/

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

#165

Post by moebrowne »

shuuji3 wrote: post #20

By running ArchiveTeam Warrior workers, you can help archive links to Internet Archive. See details in the previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684119

The tracker is here for anyone curious about the progress: https://tracker.archiveteam.org/goo-gl/

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

#167

Post by jiggawatts »

citizenpaul wrote: post #50
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If companies can spend billions on AI and not have anything in return and be okay with that in the ways of giving free stuff (okay, I'll admit not completely free since you are the product but still free) Then they should also be okay for keeping the goo.gl links honestly. Sounds kinda bad for some good will but this is literally google, the one thing google is notorious for is killing their products.

This is basically modern SV business. This old data is costing us about a million a year to hold onto. KILL IT NOW WITH FIRE. Hey lets also dump 100 Billion dollars into this AI thing without any business plan or ideas to back it up this year. HOW FAST CAN YOU ACCEPT MY CHECK!

Nobody wants to catch a falling knife, everybody wants to attach a lanyard to the moon rocket.

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

#169

Post by YouWhy »

fragmede wrote: post #138
mbac32768 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They deprecate internal infrastructure stuff zealously and tell teams they need to be off of such and such by this date. But it's worse than that because they'll bring up whole new datacenters without ever bringing the deprecated service up, and they also retire datacenters with some regularity. So if you run a service that depends on deprecated services you could quickly find yourself in a situation where you have t…

> If you were an engineer would you want to be assigned this project? If you're high flying, trying to be the next Urs or Jeff Dean or Ian Goodfellow, you wouldn't, but I'm sure there's are many thousands of people who are able to do the job that would just love to work for Google and collect a paycheck on a $150k/yr job and do that for the rest of their lives.

I'd like to encourage you consider the following two perspectives --

1. A senior Google leader telling the shareholders "we've asked 1% of our engineers, that's 270 people, costing $80M/year, to work on services that produce no revenue whatsoever." I don't think it would pass that well.

2. A Google middle manager trying to figure out if an engineer working exclusively on non-revenue projects is actually being useful or otherwise; this is made more complex by about 30% of the workforce trying to go for the rest and vest option provided by these projects.

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

#170

Post by johannes1234321 »

cyphar wrote: post #163
jerlam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goo.gl didn't have customers, it had users. Customers pay , either with money or their personal data, now or the future. Goo.gl did not make any money or have a plan to do so in the future.

Which raises the obvious question -- why make a service that you know will eventually be shut down because of said economics. Especially one that (by design) will render many documents unusable when it is shut down. While I generally find the "killed by Google" thing insanely short-sighted, this borders on straight-up negligence.

There was a time in Google where anything seemed possible and they loved doing experimental or fun things just for doing them. The ad machine printed money and nobody asked questions. Over time they started turning into a normal corporation with bean counting.
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