Google continues its epic run of reminding people why...

@carnage4life Google has been trying to get rid of URLs for years. e.g. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/15/google-confirms-experiment-to-remove-full-address-from-url-bar-in-chrome-details-opt-out-mechanism/

19 July at 1:35 | Open on wandering.shop

Samir Al-Battran

@carnage4life @thisismissem
I am shocked when I hear anyone using GCP these days, it's like building on a sand castle!

19 July at 1:40 | Open on m.fedica.com

ErosBlog Bacchus

@carnage4life This is a subset of the general proposition: Link shorteners suck and nobody should ever use them for anything.

See, e.g., @pluralistic writing against link shorteners all the way back in 2009:

https://boingboing.net/2009/04/04/why-url-shorteners-s.html

19 July at 1:44 | Open on kinkyelephant.com

Johnny Peligro 🍅

shit like this is why I fucking detest having an android phone now, and it feels awful because I was a happy android enthusiast some years ago.

19 July at 1:52 | Open on rebased.taihou.website

James

@carnage4life *facepalm*

19 July at 1:59 | Open on qoto.org

A Tiny Dragon :nite:

@carnage4life tbh im surprised they kept the links going this long, knowing them, considering they turned off making new ones in 2018

19 July at 4:19 | Open on nitecrew.rip

s427

@carnage4life I was curious about those "Firebase dynamic links" they mention as the alternative to their old url shortener, and... what a trainwreck.

2024 article published on Google for developers: Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available. In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links because of the changes we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that time. This meant that we no longer accepted new URLs to shorten but that we would continue serving existing URLs.

2018 article published on Google for developers. Transitioning Google URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links. We launched the Google URL Shortener back in 2009 as a way to help people more easily share links and measure traffic online. Since then, many popular URL shortening services have emerged and the ways people find content on the Internet have also changed dramatically, from primarily desktop webpages to apps, mobile devices, home assistants, and more. To refocus our efforts, we're turning down support for goo.gl over the coming weeks and replacing it with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL).

Current day page on the Firebase documentation website. Deprecated: Firebase Dynamic Links is deprecated and should not be adopted in projects that don't already use it. The service will shut down on August 25, 2025.

19 July at 6:24 | Open on lou.lt

Шуро

URL shorteners are terrible idea in general. Something not to use in the first place.

Every URL shortener will go down sooner or later.
Every URL shortener can track you and your visitors.
Every URL shortener can fail, refuse service or get blocked by search engine, social platform or government making links inaccessible.
Every URL shortener can spoof links.
Every URL shortener hides real link from the viewer making it at best impolite to ask people to click what they can't see.

This is not a complete list even. Just. Do. Not. Use. These.

Unless in very niche circumstances like linking temporary announcement in cellular text message.

URL shorteners are terrible idea in general. Something not to use in the first place.

Every URL shortener will go down sooner or later.
Every URL shortener can track you and your visitors.
Every URL shortener can fail, refuse service or get blocked by search engine, social platform or government making links inaccessible.
Every URL shortener can spoof links.
Every URL shortener hides real link from the viewer making it at best impolite to ask people to click what they can't see.

Expand text...

19 July at 8:22 | Open on friends.deko.cloud