Do Tiny URL Services Weaken Net Architecture?

Indus Khaitan writes "Thanks to twitter, SMS, and mobile web, a lot of people are using the url minimizers like tinyurl.com, urltea.com. However, now I see a lot of people using it on their regular webpages. This could be a big problem if billions of different links are unreachable at a given time. What if a service starts sending a pop-up ad along with the redirect. What if the masked target links to a page with an exploit instead of linking to the new photos of Jessica Alba. Are services like tinyurl, urltea etc. taking the WWW towards a single point of failure? Is it a huge step backward? Or I'm just crying wolf here?"

Comments

Re:This also weakens Google pagerank.

[JackMeyhoff]

Yes but that would be too expensive in horse power :) We all know companies like to cheap out on stuff, just as American Airlines maintenance workers.

Re:A related and important question

[aichpvee]

If republicans weren't so brain dead and crazy there wouldn't be a question. It's their own fucking fault for being idiots. Seriously, you can't make up the kind of bullshit that these people actually believe, but some people do get pretty close.