51–60 of 194 posts
I'll never use a URL shortener again.
could host your own
As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
Is that the same shortening platform running it?
And also does this have something to do with the .gl TLD? Greenland? A redirect to share.google would be fine
"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 someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.
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?
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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.
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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 resourc…
There's obviously, something in between maintaining the latency with 20 datacenter, increasing the latency a bit reducing hosting to a couple $100 worth of servers, and setting the latency to infinity, which was the original plan.
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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.
What purpose does "deactivating" any serve?
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 content, like social media posts.
3. Eventually, the domain registration lapses, and a bad actor takes over the domain.
4. Someone stumbles across a goo.gl link in a reddit thread from a decade ago and clicks it. Instead of going to Acme, they now go to a malicious site full of malware.
With the new policy, if enough time has passed without anyone clicking on the link, then Google will deactivate it, and the user in step 4 would now get a 404 from Google instead.
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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 under…
But I think compared to sqlite torrent, the part about crypto might be the fact that since there's people's real money involved (for the worse or for the better) it then becomes of absolute permanence that data stored in blockchain becomes permanent.. and like I said, I can use that 60 nodes for absolutely free due to absolutely 0 gas fees compared to Sqlite torrent.
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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.
"security and maintenance burden" == "cost" == "cost-driven decision"