Slashdot Mirror
Google Is Shutting Down Its Goo.gl URL Shortening Service (engadget.com)
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.
"Drive more installs with social, email, and SMS marketing campaigns"
Doesn't sound fishy at all.
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
URL shorteners are of the devil - people should never be asked to click on an obfuscated link.
#DeleteChrome
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!
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!
> 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?
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!
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.