Google's shortened links will stop working next year

Given how relatively easy it is to run a redirect service, and how many links this will break this is vandalism.

> When Google announced in 2018 that it was shutting down goo.gl, the company encouraged developers to migrate to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) — which has also since been deprecated.

Why wouldn't they just change the backend and leave the service alive for the end users? It seems nuts to give up all that sweet sweet browsing data.

Note that when Google made a blog post telling people to migrate from goo.gl to the also now deprecated Firebase Dynamic Links, the post states explicitly[1]:

"While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, [bold]all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination.[/bold]"

The [bold] section is bold in the original post.

[1] https://developers.googleblog.com/en/transitioning-google-ur...

Every time I change a ULR (or a set of URLs), I put a test for the redirect into my end-2-end tests, which run once per day. So I know all my URLs will work forever.

I have not thought about it for years now. Just checked for my first ever Show HN from 10 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7465980

The URL has long changed, but the redirect still works. Phew :) So all seems to be good. Here's to the next 10 years!

Google should do the same. Set up a seperate server for the redirect service itself. And then I guess they have multi project end-2-end tests running somewhere in their infrastructure. Just add testing this service and thats it. Amount of work per year to keep it up should be less than an hour, right?

Are links generated from Google apps like

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xxxxxxx

going to continue working?

> migrate to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL)

The announcement of “we’re breaking your stuff” contains an appeal to trust them on next round?

They must think their clients are complete morons

It is an old code but it might be more appropriate to fess up and say the resource has been deleted?

410 “Gone” https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410

But alas, even more apt:

417 “Expectation failed” https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/417

The real reason is probably maintenance due to some hidden costs like conflicting infrastructure and they couldn't justify migrating it.

Related discussion (2 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40998549

Discussion of the previous announcement in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272

I wonder if there's a story here involving a URL shortener service having hidden costs? I can imagine there being something in the abuse space that makes it feel more expensive than just the hosting costs to operate.

it's so sad this multi-trillion dollar company can't spare some resources to serve a some 301s.

Having products scale through time is an engineering problem, and they seem to not be able to recognize it as so.

As long as they don't understand this, they won't be able to expand their product offering (and thus Revenue) significantly faster than their headcounts.

Many years ago, there was an industrial group (?, maybe just a campaign.. can't remember the details) promised to provide protection/transfer service if one of their member shutdown.

Tried to search the news, can't find any reference to that.

[dupe]

Discussion on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40998549

Like many have said, its a shame they refuse to maintain minimal requirements to keep the links working.

Google offers cloud services. It’s like AWS saying they won’t spare some ec2 instances to keep some links working. If Google knew how to use their own cloud products then they could deploy some instances, failover, and monitoring and leave it alone, and also dogfood their own cloud products.

I host my own URL shortening service. It's 2 data columns in SQLite and a few lines of Javascript.

The reason I host my own is that specifically Google taught me not to trust the longevity of cloud hosted services. So I didn't trust tinyurl.com or whatever to be there in future. Ty Google for confirming the wisdom in that decision.

They could charge for custom video urls.

https://youtu.be/bestVideo1 for $1. I bet a lot of people would pay

Is it possible to download the entire database? That way we could undo the breakage using a browser extension.

Maybe the links may direct to undesirable/illegal content either now or in the future. Perhaps just CYA.

That is sad, especially because I think that it is not a service that would take that much effort to keep up.

've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...

Can someone mourning can me one single valuable link that will be lost?

Seems google doesn't care about pURLs

Yup, yet another service people rely on being shut down. Don’t rely on Google.

Yet another reminder to avoid the offerings of these mega corporations.