#killedbygoogle
- Google’s URL shortening service goo.gl links will stop working on August 25th, 2025, resulting in 404 errors.
- Starting August 23rd, 2024, goo.gl links will show an interstitial page warning users of the upcoming shutdown.
- Google initially suggested migrating to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL), which has also since been deprecated.
I’m sure many people chose this one over other shortners because they assumed it would outlast the others. 🤦♀️
So many links are going to go dead because of this. I’m sure plenty of software out there used this to automatically shorten links for posting on social media etc.
So many chunks of internet history is going straight to the bin thanks to this.
Good! Sick of link shorteners, 99% of the time I’ve seen them used it’s for tracking and/or disguising the true destination.
It was cool back when there were valid reasons for character limitations. But I agree, url obfuscation was often used for less savory reasons.
And I’m not sure how shorteners work for Firefox’s tracking removal, but I’m guessing not well.
Remember: never trust google
They didn’t find a profitable way to put ads in the shortening service
There it is
Google is turning into a blackhole.
Archive.org offering to step in and help if google will hand over the domain and db
Which they probably won’t…
Virgin Google vs Chad Archive.org
URL lengthening will continue as planned.
Wait, people outside Google were allowed to use it? Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in the wild.
It has long been discontinued(in 2018) but they still supported existing URLs.
TIL Google had a URL shortener.
Initially everybody could use them, then they just closed the service but the links kept working.
