Google shifts goo.gl policy: Inactive links deactivated, active links preserved
Reasons suggested for deactivation
- Cost savings: less RAM, cache, DB/storage, and infra across many replicated jobs and datacenters; internal pressure to reduce resource use.
- Maintenance burden: legacy services must be repeatedly migrated to new internal infra; without a dedicated team, that becomes untenable.
- Compliance/liability: user data stuck in old systems is seen as a legal/privacy risk under stricter modern laws.
- Security/reputation: goo.gl grants Google-branded cover to phishing, malware, and “linkjacking” when target domains lapse and are re-registered.
- Managerial incentives: cost-cutting projects look good on promotion packets; easy to make a “$ saved vs clicks” chart.
Debate over actual costs
- One side argues a URL map for a few billion links is tiny by Google standards (tens of GB unreplicated; “could run on a Raspberry Pi”), so shutdown is stingy and user-hostile.
- Others counter that replication across hundreds of jobs in many datacenters scales that into hundreds of TB of RAM and significant operational overhead.
- Several argue the real cost isn’t hardware but constant engineering churn: infra APIs deprecate, datacenters rotate, and someone must keep upgrading or kill the service.
- Some believe PM/engineering time spent on shutdown may exceed the infra savings; others think the long-term infra treadmill dominates.
Impact on users and trust
- Strong sentiment that this destroys trust in Google for anything long‑term; some vow to avoid Google products entirely.
- “Inactive” based on recent click activity is seen as a flawed criterion: links can live in books, papers, and old docs with long gaps between accesses.
- People report important personal content (e.g., blogs, theses, timelines) or critical references now depending on links that may silently die.
- Many see this as another “Killed by Google” episode where modest savings trump goodwill and long-term reliability, undermining Cloud/enterprise credibility.
URL shorteners more broadly
- Several say: never rely on any third‑party shortener for durable references; they’re only appropriate for short‑lived or constrained channels (SMS, TV ads, printed ephemera).
- Others note some services (TinyURL, Bitly, DOIs) have been long‑lived, and many companies run internal, authenticated shorteners.
- Alternatives discussed: self‑hosted tools (e.g., shlink), using the Internet Archive/Wayback links, and citing metadata (title, author, date) instead of URLs.
- A blockchain-based “permanent” shortener idea is debated; critics point out permanence is illusory if gateway domains or nodes disappear, and long URLs defeat the purpose.
Security, abuse, and branding
- Multiple comments emphasize the phishing risk: short URLs with “google” in the domain create a false sense of safety for non‑technical users.
- Some infer this reputational risk is likely a major driver of deprecation, beyond pure cost.
Archival efforts
- ArchiveTeam is actively crawling goo.gl and saving targets to the Internet Archive; a public tracker shows progress.
- There is some concern bots/crawlers might interfere with Google’s definition of “inactive,” but how (or whether) that’s handled is unclear.