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

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

#171

Post by reaperducer »

SR2Z wrote: post #137
ceejayoz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the bytes. It's the fact that it's likely gonna be printed in a paper journal, where you can't click the link.

I find it amusing that you are complaining about not having a computer to click a link while glossing over the fact that you need a computer to use a link at all. This use case of "I have a paper journal and no PDF but a computer with a web browser" seems extraordinarily contrived. I have literally held a single-digit number of printed papers in my entire life while looking at thousands as PDFs. If we cared, we'd use…

This kind of luddite behavior sometimes makes using this site exhausting.

We have many paper documents from over 1,000 years ago.

The vast majority of what was on the internet 25 years ago is gone forever.

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

#172

Post by mymacbook »

Why is everyone jumping on the blame the victims bandwagon?! This is not the fault of users whether they were scientists publishing papers or the fault of the general public sharing links. This is absolutely 100% on Alphabet/Google.

When you blame your customer, you have failed.

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

#173

Post by epolanski »

reaperducer wrote: post #171
SR2Z wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that you are complaining about not having a computer to click a link while glossing over the fact that you need a computer to use a link at all. This use case of "I have a paper journal and no PDF but a computer with a web browser" seems extraordinarily contrived. I have literally held a single-digit number of printed papers in my entire life while looking at thousands as PDFs. If we cared, we'd use…

This kind of luddite behavior sometimes makes using this site exhausting. We have many paper documents from over 1,000 years ago. The vast majority of what was on the internet 25 years ago is gone forever.

25?

Try going back by 6/7 years on this very website, half the links are dead.

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

#174

Post by epolanski »

ceejayoz wrote: post #157
SR2Z wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many of those people then proceed to type those links into their web browsers, shortened or not? Sure, contributing to link rot is bad, but in the same way that throwing out spoiled food is bad. Sometimes you've just gotta break a bunch of links.

> And how many of those people then proceed to type those links into their web browsers, shortened or not? That probably depends on the link's purpose. "The full dataset and source code to reproduce this research can be downloaded at " might be deeply interesting to someone in a few years.

So he has a computer and can click.

In any case a paper should not rely on an ephemeral resource like internet links.

Have you ever tried to navigate to the errata corrige of computer science books? It's one single book, with one single link, and it's dead anyway.

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

#175

Post by epolanski »

ceejayoz wrote: post #128
epolanski wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fix that at the presentation layer (PDFs and Word files etc support links) not the data one.

Let me know when you figure out how to make a printed scientific journal clickable.

Scientific journals should not rely on ephemeral data on the internet. It doesn't even matter how long the url is.

Just buy any scientific book and try to navigate to it's own errata they link in the book. It's always dead.

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

#176

Post by dingnuts »

justin66 wrote: post #160
jlarocco wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's less Google's fault and more a crappy tech education problem. It wasn't a good idea to use shortened links in a citation in the first place, and somebody should have explained that to the authors. They didn't publish a book or write an academic paper in a vacuum - somebody around them should have known better and said something. And really it's not much different than anything else online - it can disappear…

> It wasn't a good idea to use shortened links in a citation in the first place, and somebody should have explained that to the authors. They didn't publish a book or write an academic paper in a vacuum - somebody around them should have known better and said something. It's a great idea, and today in 2025, papers are pretty much the only place where using these shortened URLs makes a lot of sense. In almost any othe…

Even normal HTTP URLs aren't great. If there was ever a case for content-addressable networks like IPFS it's this. Universities should be able to host this data in a decentralized way.

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

#178

Post by JumpCrisscross »

epolanski wrote: post #174
ceejayoz wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how many of those people then proceed to type those links into their web browsers, shortened or not? That probably depends on the link's purpose. "The full dataset and source code to reproduce this research can be downloaded at " might be deeply interesting to someone in a few years.

So he has a computer and can click. In any case a paper should not rely on an ephemeral resource like internet links. Have you ever tried to navigate to the errata corrige of computer science books? It's one single book, with one single link, and it's dead anyway.

I’m unconvinced the researchers acted irresponsibly. If anything, a Google-shortened link looks—at first glance—more reliable than a PDF hosted god knows where.

There are always dependencies in citations. Unless a paper comes with its citations embedded, splitting hairs between why one untrustworthy provider is more untrustworthy than another is silly.

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

HPsquared wrote: post #35
mrcslws wrote: post #3

From 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".

Indeed. I've probably looked at less than 1% of my family photos this month but I still want to keep them.

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

joshstrange wrote: post #98
nomel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still shocked that my google voice number still functions after all these years. It makes me assume it's main purpose is to actually be an honeypot of some sort, maybe for spam call detection.

Because IIRC it’s essentially completely run by another company (I want to say Bandwidth?) and, again my memories might be fuzzy, originally came from an acquisition of a company called Grand Central. My guess is it just keeps chugging along with little maintenance needed by Google itself. The UI hasn’t changed in a while from what I’ve seen.

[deleted]
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