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

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

#71

Post by wolrah »

progval wrote: post #68
inetknght wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link. That someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.

Hindsight is 20/20. Google was considered by geeks to be a very reliable company at some point.

Using a link shortener for any kind of long-term link, no matter who hosts it, has never been a good idea. They're for ephemeral links shared over limited mediums like SMS or where a human would have to manually copy the link from the medium to the browsing device like a TV ad. If you put one in a document intended for digital consumption you've already screwed up.

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

#72

Post by londons_explore »

cogman10 wrote: post #67
Aurornis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of a burden could this really be? The nature of something like this is that the cost to run it naturally goes down over time. Old links get clicked less so the hardware costs would be basically nothing. As for the actual software security, it's a URL shortener. They could rewrite the entire thing in almost no time with just a single dev. Especially since it's strictly hosting static links at this point. It p…

I think the concern is someone might scan all the inactive links and find that some of them link to secret URL's, leak design details about how things are built, link to documents shared 'anyone with the link' permission, etc.

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

#73

Post by CydeWeys »

jerlam wrote: post #70
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.

Goo.gl didn't have customers, it had users. Customers pay , either with money or their personal data, now or the future. Goo.gl did not make any money or have a plan to do so in the future.

One wonders why they don't, instead of showing down, display a 15s interstitial unskippable YouTube-style ad prior to redirecting.

That way they'll make money, and they can fund the service not having to shut down, and there isn't any linkrot.

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

#74

Post by CydeWeys »

wolrah wrote: post #71
progval wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20. Google was considered by geeks to be a very reliable company at some point.

Using a link shortener for any kind of long-term link, no matter who hosts it, has never been a good idea. They're for ephemeral links shared over limited mediums like SMS or where a human would have to manually copy the link from the medium to the browsing device like a TV ad. If you put one in a document intended for digital consumption you've already screwed up.

Link shorteners are old enough that likely more URLs that were targeted by link shorteners have rotted away than have link shorteners themselves.

Go look at a decade+ old webpage. So many of the links to specific resources (as in, not just a link to a domain name with no path) simply don't work anymore.

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

#75

Post by toomuchtodo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
AlienRobot wrote: post #3

I'll never use a URL shortener again.

Any form of URL is at best a point in time reference. Shortened or not, they change, disappear, get redirected, all the time. There was once an idea that a URL was (or should be) a permanent reference, but to the extent that was ever true it's long in the past. The closest thing we might have to that is an Internet Archive link. Otherwise, don't cite URLs. Cite authors, titles, keywords, and dates, and maybe a search…

Cite Wayback Machine links, as you mention.

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

#76

Post by j45 »

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.

All while data and visibility is part of the business.

Like other things spun down there must not be value in the links.

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

#77

Post by franga2000 »

jerlam wrote: post #70
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.

Goo.gl didn't have customers, it had users. Customers pay , either with money or their personal data, now or the future. Goo.gl did not make any money or have a plan to do so in the future.

The monetary value of the goodwill and mindshare generated by such a free service is hard to calculate, but definitely significant. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than it costs to run.

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

#78

Post by neilv »

progval wrote: post #68
inetknght wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link. That someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.

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 which companies have certain reliability capabilities, Google would be at the top of some lists (e.g., keeping certain sites running under massive demand, and securing data against attackers).

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

#79

Post by cogman10 »

londons_explore wrote: post #72
cogman10 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a burden could this really be? The nature of something like this is that the cost to run it naturally goes down over time. Old links get clicked less so the hardware costs would be basically nothing. As for the actual software security, it's a URL shortener. They could rewrite the entire thing in almost no time with just a single dev. Especially since it's strictly hosting static links at this point. It p…

I think the concern is someone might scan all the inactive links and find that some of them link to secret URL's, leak design details about how things are built, link to documents shared 'anyone with the link' permission, etc.

> I think the concern is someone might scan all the inactive links

How? Barring a database leak I don't see a way for someone to simply scan all the links. Putting something like Cloudflare in front of the shortener with a rate limit would prevent brute force scanning. I assume google semi-competently made the shortener (using a random number generator) which would make it pretty hard to find links in the first place.

Removing inactive links also doesn't solve this problem. You can still have active links to secret docs.

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

#80

Post by troupo »

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?

> How did they think the links were being used?

Can't dig this document up right now, but in their Chrome dev process they say something along these lines: "even if a ferie is used by 0.01% of users, at scale that's a lot of users . Don't remove until you've made solely due impost is negligible".

At Google scale I'm surprised [1] this is not applied everywhere.

[1] Well, not that surprised

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