<quote>
Nine months ago, we redirected URLs that showed no activity in late 2024 to a message specifying that the link would be deactivated in August, and these are the only links targeted to be deactivated. If you get a message that states, “This link will no longer work in the near future”, the link won't work after August 25 and we recommend transitioning to another URL shortener if you haven’t already.
All other goo.gl links will be preserved and will continue to function as normal. To check if your link will be retained, visit the link today. If your link redirects you without a message, it will continue to work.
</quote>
Since they are retaining some links (meaning they need need to maintain that system) I wonder what volume of "inactive" links we're talking about here. It's also kinda strange they couldn't add a "please retain this link" button on that redirect page.
<quote>
Over time, these existing URLs saw less and less traffic as the years went on - in fact more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month.
</quote>
Really, they use timescale of a mere month as a gauge! I'm sure the wast majority of links would never be used again, but to gauge this I'd say you should measure at LEAST a year.
olejorgenb•6mo ago
It was very easy to set up the archiving process if you're rigged to run a VM.
Their wiki was very light on details, but from other HN comments it seems they basically are brute-forcing the links.
olejorgenb•6mo ago
> are brute-forcing the links.
And since they seem to be able to run this at a relatively large scale it seems google is not blocking them which is good at least.
olejorgenb•6mo ago
<quote> Nine months ago, we redirected URLs that showed no activity in late 2024 to a message specifying that the link would be deactivated in August, and these are the only links targeted to be deactivated. If you get a message that states, “This link will no longer work in the near future”, the link won't work after August 25 and we recommend transitioning to another URL shortener if you haven’t already.
All other goo.gl links will be preserved and will continue to function as normal. To check if your link will be retained, visit the link today. If your link redirects you without a message, it will continue to work. </quote>
Since they are retaining some links (meaning they need need to maintain that system) I wonder what volume of "inactive" links we're talking about here. It's also kinda strange they couldn't add a "please retain this link" button on that redirect page.
Ongoing effort to archive links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684119
olejorgenb•6mo ago
Really, they use timescale of a mere month as a gauge! I'm sure the wast majority of links would never be used again, but to gauge this I'd say you should measure at LEAST a year.
olejorgenb•6mo ago
Their wiki was very light on details, but from other HN comments it seems they basically are brute-forcing the links.
olejorgenb•6mo ago
And since they seem to be able to run this at a relatively large scale it seems google is not blocking them which is good at least.