Google Is Going to Break the Internet, One (Shortened) URL at a Time
This is Google’s stated mission, according to their website: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s more than a little ironic, then, that a recent decision of theirs is going to make some of the world’s information harder to access.
Before I go any further, though, a quick history lesson. The humble URL is the building block of the web. Linking to another resource (a webpage, an image, a downloadable file) on a server halfway around the world via its URL is what makes the web what it is: a vast and deeply interconnected network of information. URLs can occasionally be long, ugly, and unwieldy, which can be a problem when you want to share a URL on a platform with character limits (e.g., text messaging, social networks) or if you want to brand one and track it.
Enter the humble URL shortener, which takes long URLs and shortens them in a more concise and digestible format. There are many URL shorteners out there, and if you’ve been on the web for any significant amount of time, then you’ve almost certainly used one — even if you didn’t realize it. For example, X/Twitter has its own URL shortener — t.co — that automatically shortens any URLs posted on the platform, while other popular services include bit.ly, is.gd, and TinyURL (which claims to be the original URL shortener).
Back in 2009, Google launched its own URL shortener: the cleverly named goo.gl, which created shortened URLs that looked something like goo.gl/abc123. There was also a goo.gl “console” where users could see all of their shortened URLs as well as some basic analytics data about them (e.g., number of clicks).
In March 2019, though, Google fully shut down the ability to create new goo.gl URLs while promising that “all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination.” Earlier this month, however, Google announced that all goo.gl URLs will stop functioning next year:
Starting August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will start displaying an interstitial page for a percentage of existing links notifying your users that the link will no longer be supported after August 25th, 2025 prior to navigating to the original target page.
Over time the percentage of links that will show the interstitial page will increase until the shutdown date. This interstitial page should help you track and adjust any affected links that you will need to transition as part of this change. We will continue to display this interstitial page until the shutdown date after which all links served will return a 404 response.
Google has a long history of shutting down projects that includes Google+, Google Play Music, and Google Reader. Given that history, goo.gl’s impending demise isn’t too surprising. What is surprising is how its shutdown seems completely at odds with Google’s mission statement. When goo.gl shuts down permanently next August, potentially billions of links will be broken, making it more difficult to access the information behind those shortened URLs.
While Google’s obviously trying to ameliorate that situation with an interstitial, the fact remains that their decision will break a not-insignificant portion of the web, which is bad for search engines and users alike. (John Gruber’s absolutely right when he wonders why Google can’t continue running goo.gl given their massive earnings. Google’s revenue for Q1 2024 alone was $80.5 billion, a 15% increase over Q1 2023.)
I don’t want to make this yet another diatribe against “Big Tech.” Still, Google’s decision is a bit mind-boggling and serves as yet another reminder that reliance on tech companies can be a fraught proposition. Even when they’re making ever-increasingly ludicrous amounts of money, they’ll shut down services that provide real utility for their users. (Some of us may never get over Google Reader’s demise.) Of course, when the company in question is a giant like Google that enjoys so much dominance and ubiquity, breaking free is far easier said than done.