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Google Is Shutting Down Its Goo.gl URL Shortening Service (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.

Google is replacing its URL shortener service, goo.gl, with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) as of April 13th. These new smart URLs will let you send people to any location within iOS, Android or web apps. Engadget reports: You won't be able to create new goo.gl short links after the 13th, but existing users can manage them via the goo.gl console for the next year. After that, all the links will still work, but you won't be able to access the console itself after March 30th, 2019. Google suggests creating FDLs from now on, or using other shortening services like Bitly and Ow.ly.

154 comments

  1. Drive more installs with social, email, and SMS... by itsme1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Drive more installs with social, email, and SMS marketing campaigns"

    Doesn't sound fishy at all.

  2. Dynamic Links are free forever, for any scale. by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right up until next year when forever means they are shutting it down in 2 weeks

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    1. Re: Dynamic Links are free forever, for any scale. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this really should be +5, Insightful

    2. Re: Dynamic Links are free forever, for any scale. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's bitztream the EpiPen-hating, autism-hating, custom Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!

  3. always amazed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm always amazed by the short-term-ness of anything and everything software.
    When will we reach maturity with stable, intercompatible software? 100y from now, 1000?

    Signed,
    AC

    1. Re:always amazed by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Weird, I use lots of software from the 90s still.

      I even still use ICQ. Some people have switched IM platforms 10+ times in that period, and yet they have no new features in 20 years. They were taught a new word for graphical emoticons and misunderstood it for a new feature... and they they were given another new word for graphical emoticons, again told it was a new feature, but now told it costs money, and they bought it. "Hurdur, `stickers.'" If the same person had all their personal items covered in printed stickers, I'd forgive it.

  4. But now the full url in maps is gone by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    I use goo.gl urls to send people map links but the dialog which does that now has lost the shortener option and replaced it with a link which is automatically shortened. Why do this if you are ditching the shortener?

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:But now the full url in maps is gone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't use maps. Use OSM.

    2. Re:But now the full url in maps is gone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      you missed the part about how hugely osm sucks compared to maps...

    3. Re:But now the full url in maps is gone by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 1

      Can you even send a generic OSM link? I use osmAND but it seems like I can only share locations to other people that also use osmAND. Openstreetmap could be so much better but they seem too adverse to changes.

  5. That won't break the internet at all... by johannesg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Two things you shouldn't do on the internet: rely on URL shorteners (because they remove human readability from URLs, add an extra unnecessary lookup, and rely on a service that may randomly disappear), and rely on Google (because anything they make may randomly disappear).

    Don't use their office tools. Don't use their programming languages. Don't use their online storage. Don't use their email service. Don't even use their bloody search engine. Sooner or later they get tired of it, and it will disappear without a trace.

    1. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Two things you shouldn't do on the internet: rely on URL shorteners (because they remove human readability from URLs, add an extra unnecessary lookup, and rely on a service that may randomly disappear), and rely on Google (because anything they make may randomly disappear).

      Yeah, except it's not disappearing. Only the ability to create new links is disappearing. Existing shortened links will continue to work indefinitely.

    2. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I feel like they've hurt you in some way... just point to the area on the doll where they touched you

    3. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (...) URL shorteners (...) remove human readability from URLs

      Except for us geeks at Slashdot and three other people, no one can read a URL. Why do phishing pages work? People will routinely say "Yeah, the page looked like Apple's and it started with http://support.apple." When you ask "What after apple? Was it .com?" they say they don't know. And these are the fairly educated ones. Most wouldn't even be able to say it said support.apple or whatever. This is my anecdotal experience with friends and family. I know anecdotes are not data, but I've heard these quite a bit...

    4. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No it won't because if you bothered to read any part of the announcement you'll realise existing Goo.gl links will continue to work

    5. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (...) URL shorteners (...) remove human readability from URLs

      Except for us geeks at Slashdot and three other people, no one can read a URL. Why do phishing pages work? People will routinely say "Yeah, the page looked like Apple's and it started with http://support.apple." When you ask "What after apple? Was it .com?" they say they don't know. And these are the fairly educated ones. Most wouldn't even be able to say it said support.apple or whatever. This is my anecdotal experience with friends and family. I know anecdotes are not data, but I've heard these quite a bit...

      But I'm pretty sure it said "Click Here"

    6. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For now. This is Google we're talking about, you know, that company that has a habit of killing products that don't meet its internal targets, users be damned? If the links continue to work for any significant period of time after March 2019 I'm going to be very surprised. Also, as food for thought, Google is also also in a position to expand all the "goo.gl" entries in their own search databases to link directly to their intended targets while breaking them for everyone else in the search biz. Not that a company that does no evil would do that, of course. /s

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    7. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      This is Google we're talking about, you know, that company that has a habit of killing products that don't meet its internal targets, users be damned?

      Except this wouldn't affect users as much as it would affect companies, and "users" is being a bit dramatic. Often "user" would be a more apt word given the low popularity of things they have killed.

    8. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No â" for one year.

    9. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      "Users" in the context of "users of the Goo.gl service", which obviously includes both companies and individuals. Sure, many of the things Google has killed have been moribund and the singular form of user isn't probably too wide of the mark, but they've also killed products that have had a small but quite active community, and at least for now goo.gl seems to be closer to the latter category. By March next year though, or whenever they might eventually shut it down for good, I guess it'll be a lot smaller.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    10. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, indefinitely. You need to work on your reading comprehension.

    11. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Am I the only one that bought a 4 letter domain, just because I can make my own URL re director?

    12. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by VanessaE · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'll have to disagree a bit:

      URL shorteners do have at least one valid use: if you're short on space into which a URL can be inserted, either because of some imposed limit, or because of etiquette of the medium, such as one's signature in a forum post or email, and so long as you have some degree of control over the content the use will get when following said link. On one forum site I use, my signature contains several links, which all point to other pages on the site, all for resources I created or maintain. Those links would otherwise greatly overflow the signature editor's limit, because that editor counts characters in the raw text, not the "rendered" result.

      As for Gmail, let's face it, it's been around long enough (14 years) that it's become pretty ingrained for business and personal use. It ain't going away. As far as I'm concerned, it's safe to use, provided you're smart about it and use a real email client to access it, i.e. with claws-mail or similar, downloading your emails via POP and keeping local copies. Even if Gmail goes away tomorrow, you still have all of your data (minus whatever you haven't fetched yet), so you can just switch to some other service, and send updates to your contacts as needed.

      The rest of your post is good advice, in any case.

    13. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it said slashdoot

    14. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      It is not so much a concern what google is canceling ... but what they put life in the first place, e.g. GoogleTalk and then Hangouts ... not even having a native hangouts client for macs but need to run it as a Chrome plugin, that sucks so big time ...
      Seems the internet is only used by idiots in our times, and a "power user" has to cry every 5 minutes about their stupidity.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    15. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

      GMail is heavy linked to Google Docs, and that has lots of fancy automation via G-Scrip. Companies offer business solutions based on document management.

      I doubt that ever will go away.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    16. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Sure, but with url shorteners us geeks can’t read the URL either. So we just don’t click on the link. Then your bos goes why didn’t you click that link? You needed to fill out that info.
      Sure you can lecture your boss on malware using url shorteners to hide its true location until after you click it. But that usually doesn’t end well. I have to often call The sender of the email to verify that this is indeed was an intended email.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    17. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Normally the imposed limit is there so you don’t put urls into the spots, or go too far from the main page.

      So you are saying url shorteners today are good for sites that need to fix their space requests or you want to be a jerk and abuse the sites formatting standards.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    18. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is true we should all be more efficient and stop out sourcing these tasks because our operating systems are complete crap.

    19. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Forum software limits signature length to save on bandwidth - both for the user and the server. A signature may be displayed multiple times in a single page of thread replies. A 5000k signature displayed 20 times is 1 megabyte.

    20. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Which is precisely my point. Google has yet to see corporate or commercial users. And the links will keep working and they didn't kill the service without offering an alternative.

    21. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      URL shorteners do have at least one valid use: if you're short on space into which a URL can be inserted, either because of some imposed limit, or because of etiquette of the medium, such as one's signature in a forum post or email, and so long as you have some degree of control over the content the use will get when following said link.

      Not really. The one place that was really a problem was Twitter, but now they shorten URLs for you so that they don't take up tweet space. If you're putting a link into a sig, you want it to be punchy anyway. Putting a shortened link into your sig is a good way to never have your sig link followed by anyone with a clue, since people know that url shorteners are frequently abused.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    22. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As for Gmail, let's face it, it's been around long enough (14 years) that it's become pretty ingrained for business and personal use. It ain't going away.

      That's not much of an argument. Google is a business, not a charity, and I doubt much of their revenue comes from Gmail. If Google gets hit with serious antitrust suits (as seems increasingly likely), Gmail could very well be among the things they sell off. And then all bets are off.

      As far as I'm concerned, it's safe to use, provided you're smart about it and use a real email client to access it, i.e. with claws-mail or similar, downloading your emails via POP and keeping local copies. Even if Gmail goes away tomorrow, you still have all of your data (minus whatever you haven't fetched yet), so you can just switch to some other service, and send updates to your contacts as needed.

      You're implying the email history is the only important thing about your email account. Which is not true -- the email address itself is IMO at least as important, since it is very hard to change once you've been using it for a while. And with Gmail the address is not yours, but Google's. You have no claim to it whatsoever, you are not even their customer if you have a free account. At any moment Google can decide to just delete your account (plenty of cases where this happened), and then you have no rights and very little chance of doing anything about it. It truly baffles me that anyone would use a free Gmail account for anything serious.

    23. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by kir · · Score: 2

      Regardless, I thought URL shorteners were only useful for making things fit better in IRC/Slack/etc. and for Rickrolling unsuspecting youth (us old geeks tend not to fall for it anymore).

      --
      3cx.org - A truly bad website.
    24. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, for an unspecified period.
      First they remove creation of new URLs. Then usage will start to drop. Eventually it'll be low enough they'll just drop them entirely.

    25. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah right. If gmail goes away tomorrow and you use it for account "verification" (lol, right*) then you will be locked out of those accounts.

      But lets face facts. Almost every person on the planet relies on an email service whether it be their ISP or things like gmail/hotmail/proton. This in general is not a good practice because you have no control over the service and they are spying on you. However, they provide all the administration work. I'm constantly torn between running my own mail services and using "other" services like gmail. Running my own is obviously the "best" but at the same time it's a full time job to stay on top of security issues and I don't have time for that. Not to mention the cost of hosting. I do it but I'm not naive enough to think that someone hasn't already hacked my VPS.

      * I wish websites would stop using email and SMS for verification mechanisms. I mean email is OK in the beginning but then allow us to switch to proper 2FA (oauth, gauth type stuff).

    26. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      No, the big rationale for shorteners is stillaround: fitting a URL into a text message.

    27. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      I feel like they've hurt you in some way... just point to the area on the doll where they touched you

      Spoken like a true PR shill. They've hurt and are actively plotting to hurt everyone.

    28. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1 year = indefinetely? I'd hate to see your credit card statement, with that kind of logic something tells me it's pretty much maxed out...

    29. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you read the news from Engadget or the actual release from Google?

    30. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

      URL shorteners are necessary because useful URLs are already often not human readable, and even when they are, are much harder to communicate to others than a short string of garbage.

      This is partly due to how The Business Model caused this technology to be used in unanticipated ways. Every website is obsessed with its front page and hates when you link to anything else, because they might get less or no ad revenue if their content is actually useful to people who haven't visited it. They don't give a fuck what Sir Tim thinks they should be doing.

    31. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Limited display space is a bogus argument for URL shorteners. It's purely an interface issue: if something can't be fully displayed in a certain context, then shorten or summarize it *in that context*. Don't destroy information for everyone because certain clients can't display it.

      In the case of a service that can't accept URLs of a certain length because of design limitations, well... use something else that doesn't suck? Fix the limitations? Why hold everyone else hostage to an arbitrary decision of a single site?

      There really is no reason for URL shorteners. They're detrimental to security, privacy, and preservation of the web's structure (which is bad enough as it is).

    32. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, except it's not disappearing. Only the ability to create new links is disappearing. Existing shortened links will continue to work indefinitely.

      That word does not mean what you think it means

      "indefinite - lasting for an unknown or unstated length of time."

      So, literally, you have no idea when the existing links will stop working. Which is what the OP said.

    33. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Solandri · · Score: 1

      URL shorteners do have at least one valid use: if you're short on space into which a URL can be inserted, either because of some imposed limit, or because of etiquette of the medium,

      Another reason is if you deliberately want the URL to be short-lived. e.g. You want to post a link to a public form like slashdot, but you don't want it around forever in slashdot's archives. It's easier to use a URL shortening service which allows you to delete the shortened URL at a later date, than it is to change the URL on your website.

    34. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Score:5, Interesting
      And yet the entry clearly shows its author didn't even read TFS properly. he only read the headline, which sucks because it's stupid and misleading.
      So we went from reading TFA to reading TFS to reading the headline only. What's next, blindfolded commenting?

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    35. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Even if Gmail goes away tomorrow, you still have all of your data (minus whatever you haven't fetched yet), so you can just switch to some other service, and send updates to your contacts as needed.

      The rest of your post is good advice, in any case.

      The rest of your post is good. ;) But google has a really good track record of letting you download your data when they shut something down. So the analysis of the potential harm should limit itself to the cost of switching services. There is not a realistic risk of losing your actual email data, it's only the integration with their other tools that you'd lose.

    36. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you take a million to one odds that they still work in 50 years? No? Interesting.

    37. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!

    38. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "Stop using twitter, problem solved"
      A URL in Twitter counts as 23 characters no matter the length of the actual URL, so URL length is not a problem in Twitter.

    39. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 1

      The best use case for URL shorteners is when you are printing or displaying a URL on something other than a computer, so people will need to be able to type it in, but you don't control the source URL's contents, i.e. you're using a third-party service.

      For example, when organizing a camping trip for a couple of hundred people, I used Google maps to show the route, then got the shortened URL for that and put it on the paper flyer which was handed out. Trying to put the entire 170+ otherwise-meaningless-character URL into a 3"x5" flyer and then expecting people to retype it accurately into their device in order to pull up the route would have been ridiculous. The shortened form worked perfectly for that use case.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    40. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are both wrong. Google WILL remove existing links at some point. They never keep deprecated services around for long. Google just haven't announced when that will be yet. Smart money says about a year after they remove support for the management console they'll turn the whole thing off altogether.

    41. Re: That won't break the internet at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Totally agree. It's been the best way to share an exact location quickly.

    42. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

      I know, right? That would be like taking away Flash.

    43. Re:That won't break the internet at all... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      TinyURL lets you make a human-readable URL (they call it a "custom alias").

      https://tinyurl.com/

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  6. I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or tinyurl.com. They have been doing this for a long time now, and no log in required.

    Two links to Slashdot.org - https://tinyurl.com/87d will take you right to /. and https://preview.tinyurl.com/87... which will allow one to preview or see what link you will be taken to.

    "Click here to enable previews." seen when previewing, I assume (I've never used it) will make previewing automatic, or default.

    1. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Another service is available http://thisisanurlshorteningse...

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by Ecuador · · Score: 1

      Wow, that seems like a horrible service! Surely, they should have gone with http://thisisaurlshorteningser...

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    3. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I tried it, but it does not expand my emojis correctly. Thats sad.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    4. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Nah, was taken already

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    5. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      tinyurl like tinypic are nazi assholes. If you make one mistake they will ban your ass and you're out. Yes, they have been doing it a long time and like all old companies they haven't changed with the times. They're overly restrictive and manipulative.

    6. Re:I've always used http://tinyurl.com/ by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      https://tinyurl.com/87d will take you right to /. and https://preview.tinyurl.com/87... which will allow one to preview or see what link you will be taken to.

      https://tinyurl.com/87d is 24 characters.
      https://preview.tinyurl.com/87... is 32 characters.
      https://slashdot.org/ is 21.

      Gee, what a saving.

  7. Transient services by Sivaraj · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is the schedule for shutting down FDL?

    1. Re:Transient services by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      FDL is the new service ...

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, that was his point.

    3. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FDL is the new service ...

      Yes and the question was how long till Google shuts it down.

    4. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...What is the schedule for shutting down FDL?

    5. Re:Transient services by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      What is the schedule for shutting down FDL?

      That depends on its adoption and if it is fighting with competitors. Goo.gl offers nothing that bit.ly and others don't already offer. There's no reason to keep it around. as an independent service.

    6. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, clearly there should only be one of everything. Competition is baaaad.

    7. Re:Transient services by mentil · · Score: 3, Funny

      It'll be shut down so fast, it'll be Faster Dan Light.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    8. Re:Transient services by ByteSlicer · · Score: 2

      What is the schedule for shutting down FDL?

      Once the replacement FTL is ready, yesterday.

    9. Re:Transient services by Tsolias · · Score: 1

      That depends on its adoption

      because we've seen what causes lack of adoption to google products...
      let's take g+ for instance.
      Nobody uses it, they forced it into youtube.
      Then everybody got pissed, so they forced it into companies/websites, so now you are obligated, in order to make your website seo friendly and your company searchable, to have a useless google+ account, that nobody cares and nobody visits.
      Google products were never about adoption, they are about market penetration.

    10. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will be in beta for 10 years before.

    11. Re:Transient services by Njovich · · Score: 2

      They say it's available free forever in bold on the homepage. So in human years that's at least 12 months.

    12. Re:Transient services by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Competition is baaaad.

      It is if it doesn't offer anything that competitors don't already offer.

    13. Re:Transient services by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Spelling and grammar aside nothing in your post made any form of coherent sense at all.

      You made a subject statement.
      Said you'll provide an example.
      Made an assertion about that example that has nothing to do with the original subject statement along with an off topic comment.
      Doubled down on that off topic comment with a another completely baseless sentence.
      Then finished with another statement that while reasonable in its own right has nothing at all to do with what you wrote thus far.

      If you were making a point, ... or 3. You did so very poorly.

    14. Re:Transient services by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, I can't tell if you're serious. On one hand there is no indication that you're making a joke, but on the other hand, your statement is so retarded that I can't imagine you really mean it.

    15. Re:Transient services by Tsolias · · Score: 1

      Don't you see any connection between various google products rising, then falling, or in some cases keeping them alive just so they can have a competitive product on an existing monopoly/oligopoly? I believe that, that's the most obvious observation you can make when looking at google products/services

      You did so very poorly.

      meh... I am not a native English speaker and most of my posts are written under between small breaks.
      I am not stupid so as to have trouble extracting the meaning out of your statements, even though your are not using punctuation, but since you have that problem with my post, I'd gladly rephrase it or explain to you anything that confuses you.

  8. Goo.d by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    URL shorteners are of the devil - people should never be asked to click on an obfuscated link.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Goo.d by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      URL shorteners are of the devil - people should never be asked to click on an obfuscated link.

      That depends. If the URL is a 400 character long alphabet soup then it's already nearly as obfuscated. The ideal middle ground would be a shortening using a service that previews the URL first before directing you through.

    2. Re: Goo.d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know only one counterexample: shortDOI.

    3. Re:Goo.d by mentil · · Score: 1

      It might make more sense to create a DNS-type protocol that browsers interface with, that link shorteners can be compliant with, rather than relying on the sites to do that. Then again, now that Twitter no longer counts URLs in the 140 character limit, there's little reason to still use URL shorteners.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    4. Re:Goo.d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      That alphabet soup can hide the fact that it's forwarding your request through another website that captures all of your browser's javascript-visible data, so you really do want to know where you're being sent.

      www.black-hat.com/?url=www.white-hat.com&affiliate-tracking-id=deadbeef-007-42-69

    5. Re:Goo.d by MichaelSmith · · Score: 0

      So I have to send six lines of google maps link.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    6. Re:Goo.d by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      should do like slashdot, display the domain in [ ]'s.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    7. Re:Goo.d by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      That depends. If the URL is a 400 character long alphabet soup then it's already nearly as obfuscated.

      But generally you can see the domain, which is the important part. Granted, there are ways to obscure even that in long URLs, but just because there are other ways to obscure a domain doesn't make this one good.

    8. Re:Goo.d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't you trust my link? Don't you want to be friends? Oh well...

    9. Re:Goo.d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I compose my email in an 80x24 text console, I use short URLs to ensure stupid links always survive email transit intact. Consider:

      http://example.org/application?pid=123456789&tid=123456789&lol=123456789&ref=123456789

      https://short.url/deadf001

      Sane application developers can avoid the need entirely.

      http://example.org/a/p/21I3V9/t/21I3V9/l/21I3V9/r/21I3V9

      Of course we can do better than base 36, the point remains that the real problem is shitty web application developers.

    10. Re:Goo.d by kir · · Score: 1

      You've clearly never used some horrible thing like ServiceNow or a poorly implemented deployment of RT.

      --
      3cx.org - A truly bad website.
    11. Re:Goo.d by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      That alphabet soup can hide the fact that it's forwarding your request through another website that captures all of your browser's javascript-visible data

      That's the point.

    12. Re:Goo.d by nine-times · · Score: 2

      Meh. In a sense, the web is all obfuscated anyway. When you put a link in a page, you don't see the URL. If you do see the URL, it's usually the domain name and not the IP. If you see the IP, there's no guarantee that there's no redirection going on. Even if you know the destination, by nature of the Internet you won't know the path your traffic takes and what might be happening with that traffic en route.

      I know, I'm being nit-picky, but my point is that the Internet isn't designed to provide real clarity and transparency anyway. Adding a layer of URL shortening doesn't really make things that much worse.

    13. Re:Goo.d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop fucking your sister and grandmother.

  9. The failure of socialism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nothing is free that lasts forever.

    1. Re:The failure of socialism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Death?

    2. Re:The failure of socialism by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Beer? Oh, not free though. And definitely wouldn't last forever!

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  10. Better or worse for the scamming spammers? by shanen · · Score: 1

    Can't decide if it's a good thing or not because my main exposure to shortened links is when the spamming scammers use them to disguise their drive-by attack websites. Anyone ready to vouch for this new approach (or reproach it)?

    By the way, I've never understood the abuse of shortened links. If they wanted to stop the abuse, the solution is quite obvious. When the abuse is reported, they would take over the link and permanently repoint it at the worst website for the spamming scammer. For example, rather than direct the suckers to the scammer's website, the repointed shortened URL could point to a police website warning against the danger of clicking on mysterious links. The more spam the scammer sends, the worse for the scam.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:Better or worse for the scamming spammers? by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course it's a good thing. If you're Google. Here's the key feature for them from the FBL info page: "Dynamic Links can help migrate users from your website to your mobile app. Give them an easy way to send themselves a deep link that, when clicked on a mobile device, automatically opens in the right context within your app (even if they need to install the app first)." (emphasis mine).

      This is all about getting more people locked into Google's app and advertising ecosystem where they can be more easily tracked and monetized, both through App sales and (of course) selling their data to marketers.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Better or worse for the scamming spammers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand why Google flogs apps so hard. In the web ecosystem, google has all the data they could dream of, from their office suite, search history, chrome sync. They turn the data into money by targeting ads better than their competitors can, which is fairly harmless and well-understood so doesn't create trust problems. They also offer people the right to clear cookies or create multiple profiles, and to delete any data stored on servers that was collected while they were signed in. This is all overseen and sustainable and the collection of data they have is basically ideal from their perspective.

      Then, on mobile, a parade of scammy circus apps demands permanent serial number evercookies, all data from all accounts no multiprofile. It says, "hand over the data or you can't use the app." Android feeds the app extremely private data like background location tracking, and contacts a.k.a. social graph which is probably more private than the content of email for most people. Through "compatibility test suite," Google oversees the fairness of this trade to the developer, that they are really getting good sweet private user data, and there's no way to fake location or tell the app it's getting contacts access but only give it access to a throwaway account. Google really puts their users in a straitjacket and serves them up to the apps, on Android.

      Google doesn't get any additional data by doing this. All of the data is already theirs. When Google targets ads on mobile they're subject to FTC consent decree which requires they respect cookie clearing, account separation, and deletion requests. GDPR will provide even more oversight, and Google is a big company with a lot to lose. The circus apps are total wild west, free to assemble the data into inaccessible dossiers you can never delete, sell it send it across borders, whatever. Google is bleeding their user's data and their user's trust to these apps and getting nothing in return. Google doesn't sell your data to anyone, but they do give it away, and facilitate the trade of your data to app developers in exchange for nothing (for getting to run the app).

      When someone buys an app in the app store, Google gets a cut. When someone views ads on the web that were targeted with Google signed-in data, Google gets a cut. When someone uses a free app on mobile, and sees ads in it targeted with Google signed-in data that flowed to the app via "permissions" and then got rolled into some non-google scammy mobile ad network, Google gets NOTHING. When the scammy free app stores the Google signed-in data on scammy servers in some scammy country, Google gets NOTHING, no money, no oversight. When the scammy free app sells the data to some other scammy company, Google gets NOTHING, not even knowledge that it happened.

      Why do they put up with this garbage? Why are they encouraging it? Have they been infiltrated, or lost their minds?

    3. Re:Better or worse for the scamming spammers? by shanen · · Score: 1

      Glad to see you got the insightful mod you deserved, but I was too busy to respond and now it's too late, so this is just an ACK. Much more could be said on the topic, but you've helped motivate me to approach it from a fresh perspective.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    4. Re:Better or worse for the scamming spammers? by shanen · · Score: 1

      So here is a link to the derivative topic: https://slashdot.org/journal/3...

      I actually wrote an Ask Slashdot version, too, which was apparently put on the front page by one editor before the next one nuked it.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  11. With non-profit FLOSS and true standards. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The problem is that there are people, who made it a job, and linked their livelihood to that job.

    Office software has been finished for decades now.
    But apart from corporate useless feature creep, it had to adapt to ever-changing OS APIs, because their abstraction was not hardware-independent (and UI-independent) enough. Which was mostly for performance reasons. For which the office software had no actual need.

    I'm presently working on something to change most of that.

    1. Re:With non-profit FLOSS and true standards. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm presently working on something to change most of that.

      That's great to know. Thanks in advance!

      Signed,
      OP AC

    2. Re:With non-profit FLOSS and true standards. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      So you are working on a new OS layer API which all software will need to be ported to. While being ported they will get rid of side feature that do not work well in it and others that willl work better.

      Because iterations in hardware and software come with trade offs. This is why we need products such as DOSbox to run the old 16bit DOS programs vs trying to run it in Windows command prompt.

      Saying you are working on a way we can keep our old software working optimally on newer computers. Just says you want to stagnate the industry.
      Because Office 95 that was designed to run optimally on a 800x600 svga screen. Will either be too tiny to operate on a 4K screen, huge pixels or very blurry. While you often don’t see the new features being imeadeatly useful. If you go back to the 20 year old version you may find such feature bloat was actually a nice feature you really like to use.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  12. If existing links continue to work... by demon+driver · · Score: 2

    ... I see no big problem here, which, of course, is a positive exception in Google's history of service discontinuations.

    Those few parts of Google's own services which produced short goo.gl links themselves when clicked on, which are primarily Google's own problems now, if they even still exist. It's not as if goo.gl would have been the only or just the best URL shortener service. Personally, I like tinyurl.com, because it has been there for such a long time – and because it gives cautious folks the option to look up what's behind a shortened link before they go there.

    1. Re:If existing links continue to work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... I see no big problem here, which, of course, is a positive exception in Google's history of service discontinuations.

      agree, this is fine, so long as they keep the old links alive forever which sounds like their intent. It's thoughtful and responsible stewardship of the Internet commons within which they grew their company, specifically the one-year editing window between announcement and archival freeze. It's using their immense power to give back some stability. These decisions must have been made by either some random individual contributor or by Sergey himself because I didn't know they were still capable of executing this kind of orderly shutdown.

  13. LOL! "Free forever" by jtgd · · Score: 1

    The Firebase website says "Dynamic Links are free forever,"

    IOW, it's free now and even in the future when Google dumps it and discontinues the service it's still free.

    HAHA, very funny Google,

    --
    J
  14. They aren't for clicking! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They are for giving somebody over the telephone on hand-written on a piece of paper and similar situations, where you want to write or memorize as little as possible.

    1. Re:They aren't for clicking! by thewolfkin · · Score: 1

      They are for giving somebody over the telephone on hand-written on a piece of paper and similar situations, where you want to write or memorize as little as possible.

      exactly. If I have to type a URL from one computer to another. I used to pipe it into Goo.gl so I wasn't typing huge overly long links.

      --
      Just another second banana
  15. Google suggests ... by twms2h · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > Google suggests creating FDLs from now on, or using other shortening services like Bitly and Ow.ly.

    Even better: Don't use an url shortener service at all. What's the point?

    1. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people want to know how often a link has been clicked. You know, poor man's tracking.

    2. Re:Google suggests ... by nnull · · Score: 2

      So I didn't have to send a massive link to someone to click on. Especially for messaging services where I'm trying to convey something and use links, but the link fills up more than the message itself, like the URL for this damn story.

    3. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I use one to make business cards, I have a QR code for my site, and another for my email address. I use a single letter alias at my 4 letter domain like n@a234.com to forward to myself so that way I can use smallish QR codes as they don't need to encode a quadrillion bytes of data, just something very simple.

      I wonder if there even is any 4 letter domains even left by now.

    4. Re:Google suggests ... by twms2h · · Score: 1

      > I wonder if there even is any 4 letter domains even left by now.

      try f**k.cx

    5. Re:Google suggests ... by jrumney · · Score: 1

      What's the point?

      I always thought the sole use was to get around goatse filters. But apparently there are inexplicably popular internet services that limit you to the amount of text that could fit in a 1990's SMS message, so people use them to save space for their pointless drivel.

    6. Re:Google suggests ... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Have convenient is it to enter a 50 chars URL on a mobile device?

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    7. Re:Google suggests ... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      *How

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    8. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So I didn't have to send a massive link to someone to click on. Especially for messaging services where I'm trying to convey something and use links, but the link fills up more than the message itself, like the URL for this damn story.

      Twitter shortens links itself, you don't need to use a third party service unless you're using it for tracking the clicks outside of Twitter. I'm sure the other messaging apps work similarly. It's also one of those fancy html things - you can hide the giant link in your anchor element's href attribute, without it being the content of the element. Though, I myself would much rather see the whole link to judge the content before I click.

    9. Re: Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly you don't use SMS nor do you have a business card.

    10. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mobile is pretty much dead, I don't know anyone that still carries a smartphone around all day.

    11. Re:Google suggests ... by houghi · · Score: 1

      Some places have only so much characters you can use. https://www.google.com/maps/pl... is not always an option, where https://goo.gl/maps/mFLLVxKUtJ... might be better or even the shorter https://tinyurl.com/4poyc6x

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    12. Re:Google suggests ... by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Even better: Don't use an url shortener service at all. What's the point?

      To feed the machine "God" which will slaughter all of Humanity and create an actual Matrix because Google knows brains are cheaper than CPUs.

    13. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even better: Don't use an url shortener service at all. What's the point?

      Stop being newbs and just use IP address directly like God intended.

    14. Re:Google suggests ... by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

      How smart are you friends? Many smart people won't click on a link if they can't tell where it goes.

    15. Re:Google suggests ... by lgw · · Score: 1

      If it goes to some web site you're not familiar with, then what?

      If your PC is secure, you can click on anything safely. If it's not, then the banner ads on the most familiar website will infect you.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    16. Re:Google suggests ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Even better: Don't use an url shortener service at all. What's the point?

      and then it will be easier to type a few keywords in a search engine than a long URL (easier to type, easier to remember).

      Yeah, that's the point. Removing the shortener gives Google more revenue.

  16. Or, or by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't Goatcx that link my friend! Pass the real link over to me!

    I, being of sound mind, avoid these like I avoid hoes with stanky twats.

    1. Re:Or, or by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      no need of a shortener with such a short link

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  17. Wrong Product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just logged into this new service and it wanted to me to create a project before seeing the console, so i did and now it says
    "Send users to the right place in your app, whether or not it is already installed "
    i dont have an "app", i just want to create a short link to a webpage, methinks this is the wrong product for a replacement for goo.gl shortlinks

  18. HELLO, COMPUTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's the point?

    Like everything else on the web, for tracking people.

  19. Bitly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've noticed that the shortened url isn't as short as it used to be.

  20. Good for google is usually bad for everyone else. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that is all.
    How are you enjoying google-wave, reader and the 50 other popular services they've started and killed?

    I don't use shortened links. They can redirect anywhere. Just not worth the risks.
    But I don't use goog-book-tweet-gram either.

    BTW, self-hosting these things is pretty trivial today.

  21. Re:Drive more installs with social, email, and SMS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why would I want to be marketed to? They didn't explain that in the article.

  22. less spam by clangerbanger · · Score: 1

    from the braindead soldiers of the android army.

  23. Re:Drive more installs with social, email, and SMS by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    You can't tell who sold your data off or leaked it if you have a dozen apps all collecting it.

  24. Shortened URLs are against policy by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Our email servers enforce a "no shortening" policy. Any emails with a shortened URL is bounced. When we explain to the sender why it bounced, they usually say, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense!"

    Email isn't Twitter. There is no reason to not use the full link, which can be examined to discover that it is headed off to a compromised Wordpress site to pick up the latest targeted malware.

    Only a few of the shortening services provide an easy way to decode the link prior to clicking on it, and some of those require you to "add a cookie" or modify the link in some way to view the real target.

    There are sites that will do the decoding for you, by fetching the shortened URL and reporting back where they were redirected to, but that still tells an attacker that their email reached someone.

    So, bouncy bouncy!

    1. Re:Shortened URLs are against policy by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "Email isn't Twitter. There is no reason to not use the full link"
      Even in Twitter there's no reason not to use a full link. Twitter already adds it own layer of URL shortener, and a URL counts as 23 characters no matter the actual length.

    2. Re:Shortened URLs are against policy by lgw · · Score: 1

      There is no problem with a shortened URL. You're just inflicting your OCD on others. You seem to believe that you can somehow tell if a URL is safe by looking at it. You're wrong. And kinda dumb for believing something so obviously wrong.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Shortened URLs are against policy by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 1

      "You're just inflicting your OCD on others."

      As one of the people in charge of online security at my employer, it is my JOB to inflict my OCD on others, within reason.

      There are links out there that are "obviously" (to the observant) bad. We also have rules that look for those - deep links into a Wordpress site, for example. Or arbitrary domains in China that end with "friend.php".

    4. Re:Shortened URLs are against policy by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      which can be examined to discover that it is headed off to a compromised Wordpress site to pick up the latest targeted malware.

      How do you know if Wordpress has been compromised without visiting the site, regardless of the format of the link?

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
  25. Defending Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At this point anyone defending Google is outed as a small-souled bugman.

  26. OAuth is n^2 and breaks for desktop apps by tepples · · Score: 1

    I mean email is OK in the beginning but then allow us to switch to proper 2FA (oauth, gauth type stuff).

    The advantage of email authentication is that SMTP is federated in a manner that doesn't require a preexisting business relationship between each identity provider (IDP) and each relying party (RP). OAuth-based authentication protocols, such as OpenID Connect, require each RP to register with each IDP to receive a client ID that uniquely identifies the RP to that IDP. Because this client ID cannot be reused with other IDPs, this is an n^2 problem, meaning doubling both the number of RPs and the number of IDPs means quadruple the overall effort to issue and track client IDs. The OAuth 2 specification describes an optional Dynamic Client Registration (dyn-reg) feature that allows an RP to automatically obtain a client ID from the IDP on the RP's first connection to that IDP, but to my knowledge, none of the popular IDPs offer dyn-reg.

    Moreover, a lot of IDPs offering OAuth-based authentication expect RPs to keep part of the client ID secret. This is especially true of IDPs that use the HMAC-based OAuth 1.0a, such as Twitter, instead of the bearer token-based OAuth 2. This makes authentication from a desktop application, mobile application, or single-page web application impossible because the client ID cannot be kept secret from someone with a copy of the executable and a debugger. I've explained this before, as has Okta's OAuth guide, but Twitter has threatened to revoke and refuse to reissue client IDs that leak.

  27. SMTP line length limit by tepples · · Score: 1

    Email isn't Twitter. There is no reason to not use the full link

    Other than that RFC 2821's definition of "text line" limits SMTP line length to 998 characters. How should someone who needs to send a longer URL to your clients do so?

    1. Re:SMTP line length limit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use two lines.

    2. Re:SMTP line length limit by tepples · · Score: 1

      How would widely used mail user agents know to recombine a URL sent on two lines?

    3. Re:SMTP line length limit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it uses "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable"?

    4. Re:SMTP line length limit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares? People have been manually recombining long URLs for decades. It's called Cut 'n Paste.

    5. Re:SMTP line length limit by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 1

      The limit on text line length has been "dealt with" by email clients for, um, well, a couple of decades.

      Another reply mentions "Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable", which can split longer lines quite easily, so most common email programs will split lines at 70-120 characters, to stay well under the RFC limit.

      Looking at the raw source of a bounce message I received earlier today from a Microsoft Outlook.com, the first two lines are:

      [http://products.office.com/en-us/CMSImages/Office365Logo_Orange.png?versio=
      n=3Db8d100a9-0a8b-8e6a-88e1-ef488fee0470]

      My email client displays it as one line, with the = sign removed:

      [http://products.office.com/en-us/CMSImages/Office365Logo_Orange.png?version=b8d100a9-0a8b-8e6a-88e1-ef488fee0470]

      This "magic" pre-dates all of these shortening services.

  28. great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "When a user shares content from your app, the ultimate goal is to convert their friends into active native app users."
    Perhaps the thing I hate most with mobile these days are every simple thing must be APP.

  29. Not a good idea. by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Google suggests creating FDLs from now on, or using other shortening services like Bitly and Ow.ly.

    Why use shortened links to begin with? What's wrong with using full links?

    In the end, all these shortening services do is break the web. The same goes for third-party image hosting services. I keep finding threads where people have posted projects online but all the photos are broken because of Photobucket's new terms of service.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  30. The new system is fucking evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simple. The user should continue to have the choice to stay in a web browser.

    But I don't want an app to spy on me? Google - Screw you.