This is a classic product data decision-making fallacy. The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".
Yes, but it doesn't bring in the sweet promotion home, unfortunately. Ironically, if 99% of them doesn't see any traffic, you can scale back the infra, run it in 2 VMs, and make sure a single person can keep it up as a side quest, just for fun (but, of course, pay them for their work).
This beancounting really makes me sad.
Amazon should volunteer a free-tier EC2 instance to help Google in their time of economic struggles.
If they’re so inclined, Oracle has an always free tier with ample resources. They can use that one, too.
Doing things for fun isn't in Google's remit
Why does google kill any project? the people who made it moved on, the new people dont care because it doesn't make their resume look any better.
basically nobody wants to own this service and it requires upkeep to maintain it alongside other google services.
google's history shows a clear choice to reward new projects, not old ones.
Better to have a short URL and not need it, than need a short URL and not have it IMO.
Many videos I uploaded in 4k are now only available in 480p, after about a decade.
It's less "data-driven decisions", more "how to lie with statistics".