Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 194 posts

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

#41

Post by Aurornis »

borg16 wrote: post #18
jasonpeacock wrote: post #7

What amazes me is that this wasn't the original plan. What product manager thinks "the best thing for our customers is to delete their data!". > We understand these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts and more, and we appreciate the input received. How did they think the links were being used?

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.

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

#42

Post by neilv »

"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 that was entrusted to us, and must keep it organized/accessible. We're Google. We can do it. Oddly, maybe even with less effort than shutting it down would take."

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

#43

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #32
Jabrov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been one that survived for a really long time?

Honestly, that's a great question I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear) But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a…

> which can last essentially permanent

Data stored in a blockchain isn't any more permanent than data stored in a well-seeded SQLite torrent: it's got the same failure modes (including "yes, technically there are a thousand copies… somewhere; but we're unlikely to get hold of one any time in the next 3 years").

But yes, you have correctly used the primitives to construct a system. (It's hardly your fault people undersell the leakiness of the abstraction.)

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

#44

Post by OutOfHere »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #32
Jabrov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been one that survived for a really long time?

Honestly, that's a great question I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear) But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a…

It's not useful if the resulting URL is too long. It defeats the purpose of a URL shortener. The source URL can just be used then.

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

#47

Post by ameliaquining »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #32
Jabrov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been one that survived for a really long time?

Honestly, that's a great question I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear) But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a…

You can't address the risk that whoever owns the domain will stop renewing it, or otherwise stop making the web gateway available. Best-case scenario is that it becomes possible to find out what URL a shortened link used to point to, for as long as the underlying blockchain lasts, but if a regular user clicks on a link after the web gateway shuts down then they'll get an error message or end up on a domain squatting site, neither of which will provide any information about how to get where they want to go.

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

#48

Post by dietr1ch »

smaudet wrote: post #28
dietr1ch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than disk space I think they care about having short links, higher cache hit rates and saving RAM on their fleet.

I find even this incredibly stingy... Back of the envelope: 10 4 3*1000000000 / (1023^3) 10 4 byte characters times 3 billion links, dividing by 1 GB of memory... Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant. To put that into perspective, my Desktop Computer's max Mobo memory is 128 GB, so saying it has to do with RAM is like saying they needed to shut off a couple servers...and save like maybe a th…

> Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant.

You are forgetting job replication. A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters. Saving 111TiB of RAM can probably pay your salary forever. I think I paid mine with fewer savings while there. During covid there was a RAM shortage too enough to have a call to prefer trading CPU to save RAM with changes to the rule of thumb resource costs.

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

#50

Post by citizenpaul »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #24
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.

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!

Post reply on HN