What amazes me is that this wasn't the original plan. What product manager thinks "the best thing for our customers is to delete their data!".
> We understand these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts and more, and we appreciate the input received.
How did they think the links were being used?
borg16 · 55m ago
i read in an earlier thread for this on HN - "this is a classic example of data driven product decision" aka we can reduce costs by $x if we just stopped goo.gl links. Instead of actually wondering how this would impact the customers.
Also helps that they are in a culture which does not mind killing services on a whim.
Aurornis · 31m ago
The Google URL shortener stopped accepting new links around 2018. It has been deprecated for a long time.
I doubt it was a cost-driven decision on the basis of running the servers. My guess would be that it was a security and maintenance burden that nobody wanted.
They also might have wanted to use the domain for something else.
Imustaskforhelp · 49m ago
If companies can spend billions on AI and not have anything in return and be okay with that in the ways of giving free stuff (okay, I'll admit not completely free since you are the product but still free)
Then they should also be okay for keeping the goo.gl links honestly.
Sounds kinda bad for some good will but this is literally google, the one thing google is notorious for is killing their products.
citizenpaul · 17m ago
This is basically modern SV business. This old data is costing us about a million a year to hold onto. KILL IT NOW WITH FIRE.
Hey lets also dump 100 Billion dollars into this AI thing without any business plan or ideas to back it up this year. HOW FAST CAN YOU ACCEPT MY CHECK!
neilv · 29m ago
"Actively used" criteria scrods that critical old document you found, in which someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link.
Not knowing all the details motivating this surprising decision, from the outside, I'd expect this to be an easy "Don't Be Evil" call:
"If we don't want to make new links, we can stop taking them (with advance warning, for any automation clients). But we mustn't throw away this information that was entrusted to us, and must keep it organized/accessible. We're Google. We can do it. Oddly, maybe even with less effort than shutting it down would take."
inetknght · 34s ago
> someone trusted it was safe to use a Google link.
That someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.
Noticed recently on some google properties where there are Share buttons that it's generating share.google links now instead of goo.gl.
Is that the same shortening platform running it?
modeless · 1h ago
What purpose does "deactivating" any serve?
mystifyingpoi · 36m ago
It creates a good entry in the promo package for that Google manager. "Successfully conducted cost saving measure, cutting down the spend on the link shortener service by 70%". Of course, hoping that no one will check the actual numbers.
maven29 · 57m ago
A warning shot to guard against an AT&T Bell-style forced divestiture?
imchillyb · 32m ago
I believe this is the simplest and most succinct answer given the current anti monopoly climate the courts and prosecutors have.
42lux · 1h ago
Increasing database ops.
18172828286177 · 1h ago
[flagged]
zarzavat · 49m ago
Do PMs at Google have so much power that they can shut down a product used by billions of people?
afavour · 46m ago
They’re not shutting down a product, they’re removing old links.
I’m not defending it, just that I can absolutely imagine Google PMs making a chart of “$ saved vs clicks” and everyone slapping each other on the back and saying good job well done.
deelowe · 46m ago
They can write the proposals to do so and if it gets picked up by a VP and approved, then they can cite that on their promo.
OutOfHere · 39m ago
The product was shut down a long time ago. They're now deleting inactive data of users.
Retr0id · 1h ago
Presumably, saving disk space on some google servers.
dietr1ch · 1h ago
More than disk space I think they care about having short links, higher cache hit rates and saving RAM on their fleet.
smaudet · 46m ago
I find even this incredibly stingy... Back of the envelope:
1043*1000000000 / (1023^3)
10 4 byte characters times 3 billion links, dividing by 1 GB of memory...
Roughly 111 GB of RAM.
Which is like nothing to a search giant.
To put that into perspective, my Desktop Computer's max Mobo memory is 128 GB, so saying it has to do with RAM is like saying they needed to shut off a couple servers...and save like maybe a thousand dollars.
This reeks of something else, if not just sheer ineptitude...
dietr1ch · 19m ago
> Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant.
You are forgetting job replication. A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters.
Saving 111TiB of RAM can probably pay your salary forever. I think I paid mine with fewer savings while there. During covid there was a RAM shortage too enough to have a call to prefer trading CPU to save RAM with changes to the rule of thumb resource costs.
Retr0id · 51m ago
If they really are only purging the inactive ones, this shouldn't impact cache hit rate much.
nsksl · 1h ago
I don't understand. For you to see the message, you have to click on the link. Your clicking on the link must mean that the link is active, since it is getting clicks. So why is the link being deactivated for being inactive?
skybrian · 50m ago
> showed no activity in late 2024
Apparently they measured it once by running a map-reduce or equivalent.
I don’t see why they couldn’t measure it again. Maybe they don’t want it to be gamed, but why?
poyu · 43m ago
I interpreted "inactive" as the link that the shortener is linking to is not responding.
OutOfHere · 38m ago
No. Inactive means that the short URL hasn't been accessed in a while.
lathiat · 56m ago
If I had to guess it is possibly something to do with fighting crawlers/bots/etc triggering the detection? And running some kind of more advanced logic to try ensure it's really being used. Light captcha style.
And for an encore, I guess they'll start tearing out random pages in the books I didn't happen to read last August?
yandie · 25m ago
They probably saved the equivalent of an engineer's salary!!
jjice · 28m ago
I would've imagined that the good will (or more likely, the lack of bad will) from _not_ doing this would've been worth the cost, considering I can't imagine this has high costs to run.
AlienRobot · 1h ago
I'll never use a URL shortener again.
saurik · 43m ago
The same reason you did in the first place -- despite a ton people who saw the future saying you shouldn't -- is the reason why the next generation of people will do it despite you trying to warn them.
SoftTalker · 50m ago
Any form of URL is at best a point in time reference.
Shortened or not, they change, disappear, get redirected, all the time. There was once an idea that a URL was (or should be) a permanent reference, but to the extent that was ever true it's long in the past.
The closest thing we might have to that is an Internet Archive link.
Otherwise, don't cite URLs. Cite authors, titles, keywords, and dates, and maybe a search engine will turn up the document, if it exists at all.
Jabrov · 1h ago
Has there ever been one that survived for a really long time?
reddalo · 55m ago
Three random examples that come to my mind:
- Tinyurl.com, launched in 2002, currently 23 years old
- Urly.it, launched in 2009, currently 16 years old
I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear)
But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a link..
Now the problem is that the link would atleast either be a transaction id which is big or some sort of seed passphrase...
So no, its not as easy as some passphrase but I am pretty sure that nano isn't going to dissolve, last time I checked it has 60 nodes and anyone can host a node and did I mention all of this for completely free.. (I mean, there is no gas fees in nano, which is why I picked it)
I am not associated with the nano team and it would actually be sort of put their system on strain if we do actually use it in this way but I mean their system allows for it .. so why not cheat the system
Tldr: I am pretty sure that I can build one which can really survive a really long time, decentralized based link shortener but the trade off is that the shortened link might actually become larger than original link. I can still think of a way to actually shorten it though
Like I just thought that nano has a way to catalogue transactions in time so its theoretically possible that we can catalogue some transactions from time, and so basically its just the nth number of transaction and that n could be something like 1000232
and so it could be test.org/1000232 could lead to something like youtube rickroll. Could theoretically be possible, If literally anybody is interested, I can create a basic prototype since I am just so proud really that I created some decent "innovation" in some space that I am not even familiar with (I ain't no crypto wizard)
ameliaquining · 23m ago
You can't address the risk that whoever owns the domain will stop renewing it, or otherwise stop making the web gateway available. Best-case scenario is that it becomes possible to find out what URL a shortened link used to point to, for as long as the underlying blockchain lasts, but if a regular user clicks on a link after the web gateway shuts down then they'll get an error message or end up on a domain squatting site, neither of which will provide any information about how to get where they want to go.
OutOfHere · 28m ago
It's not useful if the resulting URL is too long. It defeats the purpose of a URL shortener. The source URL can just be used then.
wizzwizz4 · 28m ago
> which can last essentially permanent
Data stored in a blockchain isn't any more permanent than data stored in a well-seeded SQLite torrent: it's got the same failure modes (including "yes, technically there are a thousand copies… somewhere; but we're unlikely to get hold of one any time in the next 3 years").
But yes, you have correctly used the primitives to construct a system. (It's hardly your fault people undersell the leakiness of the abstraction.)
HPsquared · 54m ago
Finally a use for blockchain?
Imustaskforhelp · 40m ago
Oh boy... I think I found the man that I can yap
about the idea that I got scrolling thorugh HN: link shortener in blockchain with 0 gas fees
Here is the comment since I don't want to spam the same comment twice, Have a nice day
As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
Imustaskforhelp · 42m ago
dub.sh comes to my mind
VWWHFSfQ · 1h ago
I use pinboard.in. Also pay the $20/yr for archiving if the links rot
> We understand these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts and more, and we appreciate the input received.
How did they think the links were being used?
Also helps that they are in a culture which does not mind killing services on a whim.
I doubt it was a cost-driven decision on the basis of running the servers. My guess would be that it was a security and maintenance burden that nobody wanted.
They also might have wanted to use the domain for something else.
Then they should also be okay for keeping the goo.gl links honestly.
Sounds kinda bad for some good will but this is literally google, the one thing google is notorious for is killing their products.
Hey lets also dump 100 Billion dollars into this AI thing without any business plan or ideas to back it up this year. HOW FAST CAN YOU ACCEPT MY CHECK!
Not knowing all the details motivating this surprising decision, from the outside, I'd expect this to be an easy "Don't Be Evil" call:
"If we don't want to make new links, we can stop taking them (with advance warning, for any automation clients). But we mustn't throw away this information that was entrusted to us, and must keep it organized/accessible. We're Google. We can do it. Oddly, maybe even with less effort than shutting it down would take."
That someone made a poor decision to rely on anything made by Google.
Is that the same shortening platform running it?
I’m not defending it, just that I can absolutely imagine Google PMs making a chart of “$ saved vs clicks” and everyone slapping each other on the back and saying good job well done.
1043*1000000000 / (1023^3)
10 4 byte characters times 3 billion links, dividing by 1 GB of memory...
Roughly 111 GB of RAM.
Which is like nothing to a search giant.
To put that into perspective, my Desktop Computer's max Mobo memory is 128 GB, so saying it has to do with RAM is like saying they needed to shut off a couple servers...and save like maybe a thousand dollars.
This reeks of something else, if not just sheer ineptitude...
You are forgetting job replication. A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters. Saving 111TiB of RAM can probably pay your salary forever. I think I paid mine with fewer savings while there. During covid there was a RAM shortage too enough to have a call to prefer trading CPU to save RAM with changes to the rule of thumb resource costs.
Apparently they measured it once by running a map-reduce or equivalent.
I don’t see why they couldn’t measure it again. Maybe they don’t want it to be gamed, but why?
But just a guess.
Google's shortened goo.gl links will stop working next month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683481 - July 2025 (219 comments)
Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40998549 - July 2024 (49 comments)
Shortened or not, they change, disappear, get redirected, all the time. There was once an idea that a URL was (or should be) a permanent reference, but to the extent that was ever true it's long in the past.
The closest thing we might have to that is an Internet Archive link.
Otherwise, don't cite URLs. Cite authors, titles, keywords, and dates, and maybe a search engine will turn up the document, if it exists at all.
- Tinyurl.com, launched in 2002, currently 23 years old
- Urly.it, launched in 2009, currently 16 years old
- Bitly.com, also launched in 2009
So yes, some services survived a long time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier
I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear)
But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a link..
Now the problem is that the link would atleast either be a transaction id which is big or some sort of seed passphrase...
So no, its not as easy as some passphrase but I am pretty sure that nano isn't going to dissolve, last time I checked it has 60 nodes and anyone can host a node and did I mention all of this for completely free.. (I mean, there is no gas fees in nano, which is why I picked it)
I am not associated with the nano team and it would actually be sort of put their system on strain if we do actually use it in this way but I mean their system allows for it .. so why not cheat the system
Tldr: I am pretty sure that I can build one which can really survive a really long time, decentralized based link shortener but the trade off is that the shortened link might actually become larger than original link. I can still think of a way to actually shorten it though
Like I just thought that nano has a way to catalogue transactions in time so its theoretically possible that we can catalogue some transactions from time, and so basically its just the nth number of transaction and that n could be something like 1000232
and so it could be test.org/1000232 could lead to something like youtube rickroll. Could theoretically be possible, If literally anybody is interested, I can create a basic prototype since I am just so proud really that I created some decent "innovation" in some space that I am not even familiar with (I ain't no crypto wizard)
Data stored in a blockchain isn't any more permanent than data stored in a well-seeded SQLite torrent: it's got the same failure modes (including "yes, technically there are a thousand copies… somewhere; but we're unlikely to get hold of one any time in the next 3 years").
But yes, you have correctly used the primitives to construct a system. (It's hardly your fault people undersell the leakiness of the abstraction.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=44760545
Fwiw, I wrote and hosted my own URL shortener, also embeddable in applications.
As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
https://pinboard.in/