They can't even keep a URL shortner service up and running?
Perhaps they got tired of spammers and scammers making use of their URL shortening service?
Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#22PSA: You can make your own (relatively) shorter URLs if you're willing to guess at how to un-pretty site's URLs. My most common one is Amazon. Most URLs are amazon.com/dp/xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Knowing that you can take a nasty URL like: https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE... and change it to: https://amazon.com/dp/B00EHBERSE That's 122 chars to 32 chars. This kind of tactic works for tons of sites.
Amazon also has a hybrid between URL hacking and URL shortening: A short domain that redirects product codes.
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#23I used to use this to share my teaching material with my students from Google Drive, giving them a short and friendly URL seemed the most efficient way of sharing the material (Age varies between 18 - 99). Well, I don't know what I'm going to use now, probably tinylink, but somehow never liked 'em
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#24Can anyone explain to me what is the use case for URL shorteners? Other than for size limited messages like Twitter I guess.
They are good for plain text emails, since a lot of email systems mangle plain text emails at ~ col 72.
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#25Can anyone explain to me what is the use case for URL shorteners? Other than for size limited messages like Twitter I guess.
They’re also good for including in SMS text messages. Or print media. Or for typing into browsers on devices with sub-optimal keyboards (from my own experience, I can think of the Xbox and the Kindle)
Can confirm that SMSs are still a thing in enterprise. Several of my clients use SMS a lot. Given the character limits, they tend to prefer short links so they can give more info in the actual text. We've just migrated from goo.gl to bit.ly on two of them.
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#26They can't even keep a URL shortner service up and running?
s/can't/won't/
In other words, a 80000-pound gorilla sits anywhere it damn wishes to. (Yes, I know that the original gorilla was two orders of magnitude smaller)
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#27Can anyone explain to me what is the use case for URL shorteners? Other than for size limited messages like Twitter I guess.
Interestingly, Twitter has it's own built-in t.co URL shortener, so it's not even necessary for that. All links in a tweet are automatically 23 characters.
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#28This decision makes no sense to me. Why would Google pass on all of this free analytics data? They also use subdomains of goo.gl for a ton of their own products. Google Maps shareable links are maps.goo.gl, for example.
Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#29Re: Tell HN: Goo.gl (Google link Shortener) is shutting down
#30PSA: You can make your own (relatively) shorter URLs if you're willing to guess at how to un-pretty site's URLs. My most common one is Amazon. Most URLs are amazon.com/dp/xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Knowing that you can take a nasty URL like: https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE... and change it to: https://amazon.com/dp/B00EHBERSE That's 122 chars to 32 chars. This kind of tactic works for tons of sites.
Or just use http://a.co/gVf3K0x ...
the biggest difference here is I cannot tell if your link is amazon or if its gonna send me to a spam site or use your referral for amazon.