I'll never use a URL shortener again.
Years ago Google deactivated a similar product, which ended my access to a tech blog I had written for years.
I'll never use a Google product again.
Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
181–190 of 194 posts
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can generate share.google links on chrome for any arbitrary url.
How? I just tried each of the Share options for this thread in the desktop Share menu, and they all used the full URL. Including the QR code which I verified by saving as a PNG and scanning it outside of any Google app. I also haven't found any Share option in the iOS app either that doesn't use the full URL. But harder to test on mobile given the various permutations of sharing between random apps.
Sorry, may be wrong about chrome, but you can definitely do it in the Google app on Android.
I just disabled the setting recently. Here's a link to a Reddit thread talking about the feature
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
A Google shareholder that shortsighted might as well ask why they have an HR department or have custodians to maintain the offices, after all, they don't generate income either.
The manager in the trenches can tell if there's actual work happening, to move goo.gl from the internal legacy system to the new supported one doesn't magically happen, code needs to change for it to work after the old system gets shut off.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Shorter URLs mean fewer characters to encode in a QR code.
And how does that matter? The QR gets read either way.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hindsight is 20/20. Google was considered by geeks to be a very reliable company at some point.
Yeah, when Google was founded, people acted like they were normal smart and benevolent and forward-thinking Internet techies (it was a type), and they got a lot of support and good hires because of that. Then, even as that was eroding, they were still seen as reliable, IIRC. The killedbygoogle reputation was more recent. And still I think isn't common knowledge among non-techies. And even today, if you ask a techie w…
It’s not the sites with massive demand we’re concerned about. It’s anything that Google considers niche, even if that niche is still a few million users.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#186Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
could host your own
If you make it read-only, maybe. If anyone can generate a link, wait for your hosting provider to shout at you and ask why there is so much spam/illegal content with your domain. The you realize you can't actually manage a service like this.
I used to work for a company that ran our own. It required authentication to add a new URL, and only employees had that.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#188Earlier 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?
As the others have mentioned, the goo.gl step isn't necessary for linkjacking, but it is a reputational risk for Google.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#189This reminds me of when google deleted my entire timeline (and broke the photo integration feature) to save some pennies. This is despite the fact I am a google one subscriber and have hundreds of gigabytes free. They sent me a couple of emails as warning to a gmail address I don't use, and nothing to the primary email address associated with the account. I hope they are happy with their nickles, because they lost a $1000+ a year subscriber over it.
Re: Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Inactive means that the short URL hasn't been accessed in a while.
But that doesn’t make any sense. A link might be printed in a book. Nobody accessed it, yet they might at some point. Such a service is quite good for printing in books, instead of QR-codes.
It makes sense in a technical capacity, not in an epistemic one. I never claimed it is the right thing to do.