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> Over 99% of the links had no recent activity.

"Recent" is defined within the last year. If the Wayback Machine adopted this logic, it would be useless.

The security concerns were largely addressed by not accepting new links. This was a cost cutting measure, plain and simple. I think we all agree that a goo.gl shortener was a terrible idea to begin with, and my blog post even shows evidence that folks knew this was a bad idea at launch.

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Yeah, and I question how much cost they're saving. Just how much storage do you need for a URI redirect? How much are you spending to have a record that isn't being used?

It would make sense if they were pruning links whose TARGETS were no longer responding. But all the unused links are costing essentially nothing. Essentially all the cost was spent already.

The security concerns were not addressed by not accepting new links. As the post you replied to said,

> 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.

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