SACRAMENTO, July 19 — Google’s URL shortener has been a long mainstay of the internet, allowing users to shorten overly long website addresses, making sharing easier.
It is now putting up reminders on those shortened links that the service is being discontinued and will soon no longer work.
In 2019, Google killed the service, called goog.gl so no one could use it but pre-shortened links could still be accessed.
However that will end soon as in a recent Google developer blog post, from August 23 all goo.gl links will show what is called an interstitial page, or page loading before the target website, that the link will “no longer work in the near future.”
Google also stated that the final date when support finally ends is August 25, 2025.
How will this affect websites? It means that websites who had previously depended on Google’s service might have to remove those URL-shortened links or risk them not working.
It won’t be a problem for newer sites that have never used it but for older, legacy sites it will be a problem and thus highlights the reality that the internet might not be the best permanent archive or repository, or at least not anymore.
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