The dumbest part is like, why? How much work is it really to keep goo.gl links around?
In 2018, Google wanted developers to move to Firebase Dynamic Links that detect the user’s platform and sends them to either the web or an app. Google ended up also shutting down that service for devs.
lmao
How much work is it really to keep goo.gl links around?
A lot.
Goo.gl has a namespace for 10 billion entries, it used to keep tracking/analytics data for each link, with a user interface, and it would happily generate them for links to internal stuff.
Just keeping it running would take some containers of server racks, plus updating the security, accounting for changing web standards, and so on.
Keep in mind this isn’t some self-hosted url shortener with less than a million entries and a peak of 10K users/second, that you can slap onto a random server and keep it going. It’s a multiple orders of magnitude larger beast, requiring a multi-server architecture just to keep the database, plus more of the same for the analytics, admin interface… and users will expect it to return a result in a fraction of a second, worldwide.
They could drop all the tracking though and only serve the public redirects. A much simpler product that would retain web links.
I think they’ve dropped the tracking already. Still, where’s the money in that?
They also can’t release the database, not without prior consent of the link creators, or risking exposing some login credentials some very smart people might’ve put in there.
Why does there have to be money in it when they’re sunsetting the service?
Google/Alphabet is a for-profit corporation, it makes no sense for them to do anything without some sort of profit.
Good analysis, I agree and understand.
Yeah, shouldn’t be too hard to at least keep the existing links working in a read only state.
Another one for the graveyard!
Don’t build your online life around Google services.
Switch to Proton, Linux, Librewolf, Matrix, Gimp and Libreoffice.
Don’t rely on any company keeping a service running unless you’ve got a contract with them
That’s a whole lot of link rot about to happen.
I have probably saved hundreds of links from such a fate in my org. People there use them for everything even though the media they’re using them in allows them to be clicked (e.g. they’re not going out to print where someone has to type them in).
Thankfully, I’m in a position to un-shorten them before they get published. lol
It might be interesting to have a search engine or someone else who has built a massive list of links visible online generate unshortened forms now before Google shuts down the service.
Thanks. It says that there are already browser plugins that use their database, so looks like there’s already a way on both the scraper and user ends to programmatically avoid link rot here.
The Jedis are going to feel this one
GoogLOL
LOL¹⁰⁰
Googlel
Used instead of lol; when you’re too dank for lol
Does Google no longer want to pay for the Greenland .gl TLD?
Why anyone uses a single Google product, I’ll never know.
Disclaimer: I don’t use any google services myself.
Because it is free, guaranteed to work as long as they keep it running and marketed well.
Plus since they were early into the game of tech online they have many services that all link together.
There aren’t many that will offer most users so much value for ‘free’.
Most alternatives will have some cost if you want as much space as google provides, either the same as google (user data) or monetary (which I semi agree with, hosting isn’t free and I’d rather pay money than with data). However, not everyone is in a position to pay with money and so data is usually what they pay with.
We use Google Forms and Sheets at work, precisely because easy for a bunch of us to access, and our boss is tight as fuck, so it being free is a massive draw.
I keep looking to other ways to perform the few functions we use, but ultimately I lack the knowledge and resources to roll my own.
Yeah, I lack the knowledge and reaources to roll my own too.
So I mostly rely on cryptpad for sharing/collaborating on different document types myself. I don’t think it is necessarily free for businesses, but I am unsure.
Looks like I’ll finally have to replace that link in my resume after all.
It was useful to know when a copy of my printed resume was accessed online through the link I added on the footer, at least while the console for it was online.
Could do similar things like adding a +resume to your email link
