Enlisting in the Fight Against Link Rot

This makes me wonder if they're retiring sites.google.com any time soon?

Instead, they're just disappearing _all_* goo.gl short links. The overwhelming majority of which are benign links made by users who were promised a super stable URL link shortening service backed by the Google brand.

*edit: Not all, but nearly.

The goo.gl link shortener hasn’t accepted new links for many years. Over 99% of the links had no recent activity. The play was to scrape the web for old goo.gl links that went to expired domains, register the domain, and then you have a goo.gl URL that you can send wherever you want, indefinitely.

Nearly all of the angry blog posts, Tweets, and HN comments missed this and jumped to the conclusion that it was purely a cost cutting measure, but link official-looking open redirect URLs are a big deal in the security space.

For goo.gl links that were created by google, continue redirecting them as normal. For others, show a warning page explaining to the user that the link wasn't created (or vouched for) by google. If they press an "agree" button, still don't show a clickable link, but instead show it as plain text to be copied.

No, only those that were deemed "active" in 2024 will be kept.

It's absolutely not rare. I can't tell you how many times I sat in the back of a classroom, squinting at a whiteboard, trying to type copy a URL that looked like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/technology/silicon-chips-...

go/holidays = holiday schedule

go/itrequest

go/ithelpdesk

go/corpcalendar

go/fsckyourself = self-service filesystem healthchecks

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yes, it is still a little chaotic, and no, it should not be a complete substitute for a well-indexed corporate directory. But it is a really useful shortcut generator for the people that are good at memorizing them, and it costs little to operate internally. Every place that I've worked at that didn't have one, I wish had one.

But otherwise I think it's about traffic and tracking.

First in that you can track visitors to the short link, perhaps in a more centralized place if your org has multiple systems or if you're linking to sites you don't otherwise control. And secondly it's used when tacking on tons of query parameters that would otherwise make it too long even with expanded character limits. And just aesthetically a short link might be more aesthetic in your post.

Imagine seeing "link.short/abcd1234" vs "linksrus.corporate/blog/2025/08/12/the-title-of-our-post.html?utm=something&some-other-tracking-param=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz&even-more-data-in-the-url&some-hashed-value=QXNoIG5hemcgZHVyYmF0dWzDu2ssCiAgIGFzaCBuYXpnIGdpbWJhdHVsLApBc2ggbmF6ZyB0aHJha2F0dWzDu2sKICAgYWdoIGJ1cnp1bS1pc2hpIGtyaW1wYXR1bAoKT25lIHJpbmcgdG8gcnVsZSB0aGVtIGFsbCwKICAgb25lIHJpbmcgdG8gZmluZCB0aGVtLApPbmUgcmluZyB0byBicmluZyB0aGVtIGFsbAogICBhbmQgaW4gdGhlIGRhcmtuZXNzIGJpbmQgdGhlbS4KCg"

Of course, this is possible in other ways, but note that I said, “easy”. ;)

Later, adding things like analytics and tracking (eg: not just in social media, but also in email campaigns) became another reason to use them, especially for those less tech inclined.

It would be a serious breach of trust for them to publish the database. It likely includes links to non-public YT video URLs, for example.

Giving the domain to a 3rd party is not going to happen.

They could possibly provide a GCP service where you make an authenticated request to look up the value of a given goo.gl key. That would mitigate fishing concerns, eliminate the pressure of running a productionized legacy service, and allow the to do use quotas etc to tamp down on abuse. But that also would be covered by the regulatory laws and I don't know what they say about such a thing.

Two weeks ago [1] they were doing 37k a minute with ETA just barely before end of the month. Now it's ~55k a minute, and ETA of just 5 more days.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44688478

I guess Chrome metrics and URL-suffixes now answer this better (and so they probably failed to justify the internal budget to keep it)...

Google could easily afford to keep existing short links working indefinitely and simply not allow new entries... it's a simple KV lookup and redirect. Even with billions of links, hardly any overhead.

But they actually backtracked and said they'll keep the "active" links working.

Why even spend the effort to remove the "inactive" links? They must feel they represent some sort of liability?

Or would it have been too embarrassing to just cancel the whole turn-down plan?

it is relatively simple and inexpensive to operate and there is no reason it can’t continue operating into the indefinite future.

I disagree with the op on one major point… They suggest that the proper way for a service like this to operate is with a public database of links…

However, when I think of all of the different ways, one might use a shorter, it seems obvious that many links would necessarily be sensitive and/or private.

Therefore, I consider myself to have a dual mandate: privacy of the links created, and a duty, that I have assumed, of running the service for decades.

Also, don't use link shorteners... and don't build link shorteners as it just enables people to use them.

It's mostly for print usage anyway.. and with all the TLDs out there now, you can definitely still get some short options. I literally have one strictly for (reverse)dns for my server(s). Another for my mail server, separate from the domains the server hosts.

Also, hosting your own means you don't have to worry about being associated with externalized spam links. Of course, if you are a spammer, then it works even better for users that will block you.,