
Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service - modinfo
https://goo.gl/
======
C4K3
Previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272)

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joefarish
"While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will
continue to redirect to the intended destination."
[https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-
goog...](https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-google-url-
shortener.html)

~~~
samuell
I hope this doesn't change too. Felt I had to use it to link a humongous
wikidata SPARQL query in a (software) research paper recently.

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mcast
I hope you added the entire link in an appendix, otherwise it’s not Google’s
fault for ruining your paper.

~~~
samuell
The query itself is available in a screenshot. Also a pretty periferal part of
the paper.

Looked/thought hard about options but did not come up with better at the time.

But wanted to highlight how important it is for parties starting such services
to have a plan for longevity. Hopefully Goog will keep old links going for a
long time.

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cmer
I'm not sure how you guys feel about this, but personally, I've been avoiding
Google services for the last couple of years because I just assume they'll
eventually get shut down.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Same here. Only thing I'm still strongly dependent on is gmail. I don't really
think that's going away anytime soon, but out of principle I'd like to move
away from it. Takes a lot of energy unfortunately and you probably need to
keep a redirect in place for a long time just in case...

~~~
bredren
Is there a self-hosted web mail service w ux like gmail, that you can migrate
to smoothly and pay a license for?

I would consider this move. I just assume no one has ux even close. It would
take me at least a year to fully transition from one gmail address.

~~~
solarkraft
Not self-hosted, but I am very happy with Zoho [0]. They target companies and
their free plan includes lots of features like support for your own domain.
The web UI is comparable to GMail (indeed in parts I prefer it) and they offer
a very good Android app as well.

[0]: [https://www.zoho.com/mail/](https://www.zoho.com/mail/)

~~~
ValentineC
Zoho recently removed IMAP and email forwarding from their free tier (though
existing users were grandfathered in), so stay away if you value email
portability.

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cstuder
I've recently came across a use case for an URL shortener (Entering long API
calls on mobile devices) and was looking for a self-hosted solution. Any
recommendations?

(No public shortening service, only admins can create new shortcuts.)

~~~
amelius
I'm looking for a URL shortener that tells me how many users clicked the link.

~~~
ptman
Is that your only requirement? In that case even my very simple one would be
enough: [https://github.com/ptman/urlredir](https://github.com/ptman/urlredir)

~~~
amelius
Other requirements would be that it is actually hosted somewhere :) and
doesn't ever shut down.

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weinzierl
The last time I used an URL shortener was in the old days when Twitter still
counted every character of the URL against the 140 char limit. I'm curious
what use cases URL shortening services have nowadays?

~~~
patio11
A lot of people use them for tracking. For example, you can use one underlying
URL but have several shortened ones for various promotional places (email,
Twitter, etc) and then use the analytics for the shortener to see which place
is actually sending you traffic.

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jwilk
Archived copy, which works with JS disabled:

[https://archive.is/r53k9#0%](https://archive.is/r53k9#0%)

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gesman
I used to register and use domain go.gl for my photography business in early
2000’s

Was thinking about registering goo.gl just for kicks (it was available back
then) but turned off this idea because Greenland would charge $50+ for
registering. And it had to be done over the FAX!

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SeanKilleen
If you want a free OSS URL shortener for your own domain name, I built a
simple one at [http://xluh.co/repo](http://xluh.co/repo). Will be expanding on
it in the future.

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qbaqbaqba
I really would appreciate a link shortening service automatically creating
IPFS mirror!

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hliyan
This would not be a problem if websites themselves provided shortened URLs for
all paths within their domain name:

    
    
      foo.com/2018/03/31/the-title-of-an-article => foo.com/a3ef33

~~~
frou_dh
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16722817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16722817)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/b00b00](https://news.ycombinator.com/b00b00)

not very short

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dosshell
I do not understand. Please say what you mean in your message instead of just
dropping some urls:s. For example now, your url:s goes to this submission and
an unknown (!?). If you had written what you meant at least I could understand
your point.

~~~
mintplant
They are examples of a long "short URL" following your specification.

    
    
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16722817
    

might shorten to

    
    
        https://news.ycombinator.com/b00b00
    

which is not very short given the length of the hostname.

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sus_007
DUPE:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719272)

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hartator
A good alternative: [https://lc.cx](https://lc.cx)

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mikro2nd
I guess I was just a little prescient back in 2011, when I wrote of URL-
shortening services in a blog post, "let's not forget that these entities have
a nasty tendency to vanish". Not that being prescient about the Big G end-of-
lifing services is particularly visionary or difficult, tbh.

The post[1] was to publicise a small shortener I'd written for myself
(Java/JSP solution) -- in many ways deficient and lacking all sorts of
features (stats, UI) but it worked well enough for me for a time until I got
lazy, got ill, and got rid of the server it was running on. But I was bang on-
target about the likelihood of such things disappearing under the waves.

I guess it's time to dust it off[2], bring the codebase up to date and get it
working again. I'm a bit doubtful about hosting it on, say... Google Compute
free-tier or something... for who knows when /that/ service will get taken
down.

[1] [http://onemikro2nd.blogspot.co.za/2011/04/shrtn-url-
shortene...](http://onemikro2nd.blogspot.co.za/2011/04/shrtn-url-
shortener.html)

[2]
[https://bitbucket.org/mikro2nd/shrtn](https://bitbucket.org/mikro2nd/shrtn)

~~~
asaph
> it worked well enough for me for a time until I got lazy, got ill, and got
> rid of the server it was running on. But I was bang on-target about the
> likelihood of such things disappearing...

Oh, the irony...

~~~
sethammons
Kinda the opposite of irony. They said these things disappear. Had they said,
"but this one won't," then we would be approaching irony.

~~~
asaph
My impression was that building his own URL shortenner was undertaken as a
mitigation of the risk of other URL shortenners disappearing.

