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I wonder what the web will be like in 10 years when most of these URL shorteners don't exist anymore and we're just left with a web full of links that go nowhere. I'm sure the Google one will survive, seems like we shouldn't have to use these URL shorteners at all though.

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i agree with you, but how many of those unshortened links do you think will exist 10 years from now? i think the web is like a brain in which memory is active, not static. it`s just a bit too young for that to be obvious.

At least the unshortened links have a chance of being scraped by things like archive.org; I wonder if it scrapes anything meaningful from the popular URL shorteners.

Actually, scraping only links from shorteners would be a a good strategy form preserving what is worth preserving.

Like what? Junk with referral IDs?

I don't know about the rest of you but there are plenty of links in my bookmarks that are probably more than 10 years old that are still active.

And many, many, many more links you've clicked on in the last ten years that lead to 404s right now.

There was some initiative to create an archive of shortened URLs if the provider were to close down. http://www.archive.org/details/301works. But looks like it did not gain much traction.

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