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.
"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.
Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
not nearly as bad of a security risk as the giant man in the middle decrypting most of the web's SSL traffic that is CloudFlare.
That's not how how any of that works.
Either you're claiming that CloudFlare is the MITM decrypting traffic: The owner of a CA root certificate can not decrypt information encrypted with the host certificate.
Or you're claiming that they are the host decrypting traffic, in which case they aren't the person in the middle, but literally the part trusted to serve you the data.
Re: (Score:2)
A SSL/TLS proxy can trivially decrypt TLS traffic and re-encrypt it with its own cert.
Re: (Score:1)
> The owner of a CA root certificate can not decrypt information encrypted with the host certificate
They most certainly can - just issue themselves with a host cert signed by that CA (or even a wildcard if they're lazy) and m-i-t-m it.
Doing this on-the-fly is SOP for most corporate security suites.
Doing it undetected is a little more challenging...
Re: (Score:2)
I worked in this field for a bit. Our customers had to upload their private cert so that we could sit in between the client machine and our customer's server in order to scrub and sanitize the traffic. It was necessary for us to be able to inspect the requests that came in for malicious traffic.
Beta - Canceled (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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 ... :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Just google "killedbygoogle" (or add .com to that) for the list.
Re: (Score:2)
GP was alluding to googol
Re: (Score:2)
Google is corrupt and incompetent
the inevitable result of classism
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re:One more step... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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
Re: (Score:2)
"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.
Re: One more step... (Score:2)
I didn't realize Twitter's technology was so good it could implement concatenated SMS on non-participating carriers.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
But what will replace Firebase? (Score:2)
Seeing how the site about Firebase dynamic links already returns a 404. Did google kill the sequel before the original?
Re: (Score:3)
Firebase is also being shut down, with the same 25/08/2025 end date
Never trust a google service (Score:5, Interesting)
They will always cancel it. They're even dismantling search.
Re: (Score:2)
"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)
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)
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)
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:
Another resident of Google's island of misfit toys (Score:2)
Replaced with something that also returns 404? (Score:2)
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.
Capitalists forgetting to be capitalists? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Article link "Firebase Dynamic Links" returns 404 (Score:1)