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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.

90 of 154 comments (clear)

  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
  3. 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: 1

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

    2. 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.

  4. 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 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

    3. 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!
    4. 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!
    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.

    12. 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.'"
    13. 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.
    14. 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.

    15. 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.

    16. 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.

    17. 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.

    18. 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)
    19. 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.

    20. 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.

    21. 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.
    22. 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.

    23. 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.

    24. 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?
  5. 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 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.

  6. 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 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.

    4. 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.
    5. Re:Transient services by ByteSlicer · · Score: 2

      What is the schedule for shutting down FDL?

      Once the replacement FTL is ready, yesterday.

    6. 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.

    7. 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.

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

      Competition is baaaad.

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

    9. 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.

    10. 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.

  7. 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 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.
    2. 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...
    3. 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.

    4. 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.
    5. 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.

    6. 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.

  8. 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 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.
    3. 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.
  9. 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 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.
  10. 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.

  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. 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 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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

    4. 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.

    5. 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...
    6. Re:Google suggests ... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      *How

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    7. 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.
    8. 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.

    9. 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.

    10. 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.
  14. 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...
  15. 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...
  16. less spam by clangerbanger · · Score: 1

    from the braindead soldiers of the android army.

  17. 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.

  18. 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
  19. 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.

  20. 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 tepples · · Score: 1

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

    2. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

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    #DeleteFacebook