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Google URL Shortener Links Will Return a 404 Response 39

In 2018, Google replaced its URL shortener service, goo.gl, with Firebase Dynamic Links, citing "the changes we've seen in how people find content on the internet, and the number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that time." Although it stopped accepting new URLs to shorten, it continued to serve existing URLs that used their service. That's about to change on August 25th, 2025, when Google will turn off the service portion of Google URL Shortener.

"Any developers using links built with the Google URL Shortener in the form https://goo.gl/* will be impacted, and these URLs will no longer return a response after August 25th, 2025," says Google in a blog post today. "Starting August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will start displaying an interstitial page for a percentage of existing links notifying your users that the link will no longer be supported after August 25th, 2025 prior to navigating to the original target page. Over time the percentage of links that will show the interstitial page will increase until the shutdown date." All links will return a 404 response after the shutdown date.
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Google URL Shortener Links Will Return a 404 Response

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  • Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:26PM (#64635973)

    Now if only the rest of the URL shorteners would die as well. They have been nothing but a security risk from day 1.

    • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)

      by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:57PM (#64636045)

      Now if only the rest of the URL shorteners would die as well. They have been nothing but a security risk from day 1.

      Do you remember when tweets were 120 characters long, including any and all URLs?

      Do you remember when magazines needed to put URLs, but the CueCat failed miserably and QR code Scanners were not prevalent yet?

      Pepperidge farms remmeber.

      Having said that, I agree with you, those were a security risk, and lest's hope they die sooner rather than later.

  • Beta - Canceled (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:30PM (#64635985)

    Google just starts too many things, and follows through with almost none of them. With such a short attention span nobody should rely on any of their adventures for real work.

    • Google just starts too many things, and follows through with almost none of them. With such a short attention span nobody should rely on any of their adventures for real work.

      Exactly. The only google service I use is their forms - and I'm constantly looking for alternatives because I don't trust them to not discontinue them.

    • Google just starts too many things, and follows through with almost none of them.

      Any idea how many? Seems like there should be a number for that -- like a really high number, like ... :-)

    • by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      Google is corrupt and incompetent

      the inevitable result of classism

      • by stripes ( 3681 )

        Google is corrupt and incompetent the inevitable result of classism

        Google as a system is incompetent. Promotion strongly favors launches. It doesn't really care about sustaining products unless they become mega-hits and have a useful revenue model. Launching a URL shortener can result in a promotion for the people that launch it, or do the lions share of the work or maybe it is merely a significant part of a promo packet for most of those people. It doesn't really have much of a way to earn money thou

        • by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

          no, sadly Google and all these corporations are completely corrupted by undue upper class influence, they are all classist scams cheating the rest of us so the rich can get needlessly richer

          corporatocracy and or plutocracy, take your pick

  • One more step... (Score:5, Informative)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:38PM (#64636005)
    ...towards internet destruction. There are tons of forum discussions using url shorteners, now they become meaningless.
    • by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:51PM (#64636027)

      Was hitting character limits in a forum post that much of an issue that URL shorteners were needed?

      The main uses of shorteners I saw was:
      1) Twitter, due to post limits.
      2) To hide malicious payloads, or hide referral links to shopping sites on forums where referral links were banned.
      3) To hide links to sites on forum posts where linking to specific domains was banned (for business/competitive reasons).
      4) As a pass-through for engagement metrics with a specific webpage.

      • Re:One more step... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @06:49PM (#64636283)

        Was hitting character limits in a forum post that much of an issue that URL shorteners were needed?

        It's not about character limits. The internet is full of such links because it turns out a 300 character URL is a mess eyesore in the middle of any post. That will all be broken now thanks to the people working here: https ://www.google.nl/maps/place/Mountain+View,+CA,+USA/@37.4031083,-122.1235903,13z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x808fb7495bec0189:0x7c17d44a466baf9b!8m2!3d37.3860517!4d-122.0838511!16zL20vMHI2YzQ?entry=ttu

      • "1) Twitter, due to post limits."
        A URL counted as a fixed length against the Twitter character limit, and Twitter ran it through its own URL shortener. Using another shortener on top of that was pointless for actually shortening the URL. It was only good for capturing metadata.

        • It did? Checking my old SMS archive, I don't see anything that looks like it was edited/replaced.

          I didn't realize Twitter's technology was so good it could implement concatenated SMS on non-participating carriers.
      • by Opyros ( 1153335 )
        Don't forget Usenet; that was where I mostly used URL shorteners.
    • by KalvinB ( 205500 )

      Any competent developer can parse out the shortened URLs in their database and replace them with the full URL that Google redirects the short URLs to.

  • Seeing how the site about Firebase dynamic links already returns a 404. Did google kill the sequel before the original?

  • by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:48PM (#64636021)

    They will always cancel it. They're even dismantling search.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      "Sorry, Google Search has been deprecated. We now only offer deprecation management services...until Friday, then we'll only offer black hole simulations."

  • Internet Archive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @04:54PM (#64636039) Journal

    It's likely the Internet Archive has already crawled a significant portion of these URLs. They could potentially provide a mapping service: you enter the goo.gl URL into their page and it returns the link to the destination.

    • Re: Internet Archive (Score:4, Informative)

      by vbdasc ( 146051 ) on Friday July 19, 2024 @01:22AM (#64636729)

      Google itself should dump the URL database and hand it to the IA and any other interested parties with good reputation. It could even make a torrent with the data and post it to major trackers. But Google will most probably do none of these, because their times of not being evil are long past. I'm afraid that in their greed, they might even sell the goo.gl domain to the highest bidder.

  • Oh look! (Score:5, Informative)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @05:08PM (#64636061) Homepage

    Oh look! An article about a link service returning 404s, but the editors still including a link to Firebase Dynamic Links which ... wait for it ... returns a 404!

    The correct link is here [google.com], but look again ... that page says:

    Deprecated: Firebase Dynamic Links is deprecated and should not be adopted in projects that don't already use it. The service will shut down on August 25, 2025.

  • https://firebase.google.com/pr... [google.com] from TFS returns 404

    Also, I don't see why shortened URLs would be found in any code. URLs in code is bad but if you must, use the form the least likely to change. Shortened URL's adds a layer than can break for zero benefit. Shorted URL's only make sense if there are character limits or user entry. Character limits are found only in programming languages obsolete for multiple decades. And if user entry then by definition, it isn't in the code.

  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday July 18, 2024 @05:38PM (#64636093) Journal

    It's dumb to outright turn them off. Google could just keep using the interstitial page, with a deprecation warning, and put ads on it.

    That's a win-win: users can still get to old links, and Google gets easy revenue.

  • Google is getting better and better at returning 404.

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president, Litton Industries

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