
Bit.ly's shady business model - ozkatz
http://ozkatz.github.io/bitlys-shady-business-model.html?hn
======
andrewvc
This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into
bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're
running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's.
ESPECIALLY the free ones.

It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning
something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to
someone else.

You would do well to reflect on these events and ask yourself why instead of
accepting your own error here you've pushed the blame onto bit.ly.

~~~
pduszak
But... why can't they just give me free things? I don't see a problem with
building my business atop the back of another and sharing 0% of the profit. /s

~~~
ozkatz
I've also updated the post to reflect this: I don't mind paying. Its the
policy of not leaving me a choice to do so by not allowing me to export my
data and go elsewhere that bothers me.

~~~
jasode
How would they realistically "allow" you to export your data?

Would it require extra programmer effort and cost to develop such export
functionality? If they didn't invest the money to build that capability, why
would they want to? What's the ROI for them to do it?

It took several years for GMail to have mailbox export capabilities. Some team
somewhere has to write and test all that code.

~~~
jplur
Is there even data to export? It appears to me the OP would need the bit.ly
domain to preserve the links, otherwise he could just scrape all the URLs and
find a way to redirect them.

~~~
yebyen
He used his own custom URL, which is cleverer because he can take it with him,
but not so clever because ... reason we are having this conversation now, you
have to think this through! I've never used Bit.ly's hosted service, but he
already said there's no way to export the data. So, hopefully clear there is
some data, Bit.ly has a list of shared URLs from his customers, and they've
populated a database with some short codes in order to redirect them.

They are (correct me if I'm not understanding how this service works) the only
ones in a position to know which short URLs are already used and which ones
are not.

So, if the list of short codes is short enough that he can search it in a
couple of days and follow all of the links, then that's obviously what he
should be doing rather than having public gripe time on HN.

(Then again, if he pays them just once he gets a decent bit of extra time, and
they get paid for providing the service when his business was too small to
justify him bringing his own infrastructure. Win-win?)

------
eduardordm
If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think
that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and
they didn't notify you.

Link: [https://bitly.com/a/pricing](https://bitly.com/a/pricing)

And a quote:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" \-
Robert J. Hanlon.

\---

Edit (please read this)

Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly that page
was nowhere to be found"

My reply:

That actually changes everything.

As I understand, they are not retaining your data, but will pull the plug on a
service you now depend and are not offering migration options, am I correct?
This is certainly an awful business practice it could be illegal, but there is
a problem.

At the time they failed to communicate the pricing so you started using their
service, judging it would be free. If they started to charge, you could just
pay or move to another provider, but the very model of their tool makes it
impossible for you to truly "migrate" to another provider since the links are
widespread, this isn't exactly their fault (nor yours).

If they are charging you 995$ just because they know you are out of options
you might have a case, but that's so time/money consuming I would advise you
to just do your best to migrate the widespread links.

Best of luck

~~~
davidblueit
there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page
that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear

~~~
pushplay
The pricing link isn't at the top of the home page, but it is at the top of
'Features' and 'Get Started.' More over, the list of clients at the bottom
includes some large companies. Surely you must realize that someone is paying
for something here.

I think Facebook and Google have lulled us into a false, unquestioning
expectation that online services are free; when really we should be suspicious
of _any_ company claiming to offer a free service.

------
lost_name
I feel it's a little underhanded call it shady while simultaneous admitting
the information was there in a document you opted not to read as you built
your business around it.

~~~
markbnj
I agree. The post title is very unfortunately worded. There's nothing shady
about bit.ly adhering to, and expecting the OP to adhere to, their clearly-
stated business policies.

------
krelian
I really don't see the problem here. Did you have access to the export feature
before and now it's been removed? If you did, you don't have any backups?

Building a business around a 3rd party service that you are not paying for
without carefully reading the TOS or doing some research beforehand is a big
mistake. The least you could do is save a copy of all the data for easy (read:
reduced pain) migration in case it's ever needed.

------
Alupis
It seems the article writer not only did not read the TOS before signing up,
but also make a critical error of thinking they could use the service for free
at the tune of 50,000 links per month!

They built their company around another company's free service, ignored the
fact that Bitly has to make money off their service somehow (guess what, they
charge for high volume customers), and then became outraged when bitly told
them they needed to pay up.

If link shortening is so integral to the business, why have they not
implemented their own link shortener?

Quit complaining you got something for free and abused it, and now they want
you to pay them for the apparently critical service they provide you with.

------
Tomte
So basically you used a service that costs money, you didn't pay any, and now
you're peeved that they'd actually like to collect?

> They could have dropped any other amount they wanted

They probably told you "the usual amount". Are there any grounds for suspicion
that they are quoting you some outrageous price?

I don't see what could qualify as "shady" here.

And btw: from a very possible point of view they might think you didn't forget
to read the small print, you deliberately tried to defraud them by acting as
if you were non-commercial.

They can't look inside your head.

------
dublinben
I'm amazed that they thought it was a smart business decision to rely on a
free bit.ly account (with their own domain!) instead of running their own URL
shortener. Yourls ([https://yourls.org/](https://yourls.org/)) is free and
open source, and has been around for years. There's an excellent reason why
every major publisher operates their own URL shortening service, and this
article demonstrates it perfectly.

------
frostmatthew
The article has been updated to say " _My biggest gripe with bit.ly is not
their pricing, it 's their policy of not letting users export their data and
by that locking their users in._" \- so basically in addition to building his
business around violating terms of service he couldn't be bothered to read he
also never considered vendor lock-in.

When choosing any technology or service one shouldn't _expect_ there to always
be an easy way to switch. Vendor lock-in is something that needs to be
considered and investigated _before_ deciding a technology or service. With
the author's updated "biggest gripe" it sounds like he would consider it
Oracle's fault if he built his business using OracleDB and then decided to
switch to MongoDB.

I never heard of Swayy before reading this article - but it did a lot more to
convince me to never consider using it than convince me of anything "shady" on
bit.ly's end.

------
johnward
Bit.ly could have just stopped redirecting your urls, waited for you to figure
out why and contact them. They didn't do that. They contacted you and gave you
a chance to fix what you are doing wrong. Plus they probably could bill you
for past traffic but they aren't doing that either.

------
ForHackernews
Wait, so you've been actively violating their terms of service for months, and
now you're mad that they want you to start paying for the commercial use
you've already been doing?

Explain to me again how bit.ly are the bad guys here?

------
jondot
Sounds like your mistake. If your business relies on link shortening, you
should identify it early in the process and build your own.

I don't use personally and every now and then I examine the reasoning of
delegating parts of my products to 3rd party providers.

------
mcmillion
If your product is taking off, learn from your mistake of not following the
ToS and just build your own in-house URL shortener.

~~~
ozkatz
Very true. Not shying away from my responsibility. I'm mostly to blame. And
still - can't say I like bit.ly's way of doing business.

~~~
stronglikedan
Really, you are more than "mostly" to blame; you are "completely" to blame.
You're also bordering on defamation, so you should probably reconsider your
article.

As I said on the comment on your site: > Nothing is "deep within" the TOS, if
you do what you are supposed to do when using it as part of your business
model, and read it in it's entirety.

You completely and solely failed in your due diligence.

------
Cakez0r
I think it's perfectly reasonable that bit.ly would want to charge for heavy
usage of their service and are unwilling to spend their resources helping
another company migrate away from their service because they decided they
don't want to pay for it. It's unfair to call out bit.ly as having a shady
business model when you build a service that relies on a third party and don't
even bother to do you due diligence and find out the licensing costs!

------
ddorian43
Create a script to follow those urls and migrate and byebye?

~~~
jonlucc
I thought about this, but they still have the problem that the old links
shared won't resolve.

EDIT: mseebach is right, they just have to copy the link format

~~~
mseebach
Why not? They have their own domain that they'll presumably point to a new
service.

------
nathas
If you sign in, under the "Settings" -> "Branded Short Domain" section, there
are two links.

One says "Personal", and lets you continue along without pricing being
mentioned.

Then there's a "Business" link that forces you talk with Bitly -- I'm assuming
because you would have immediately been notified that it cost money.

You abused a service, and now you're upset because you can't scam them. Cool.

------
Mvandenbergh
So the only place that this mysterious information was documented (apart from
Bit.ly's website) was in the TOS. In other words, the contract governing the
relationship between the two businesses. Who would ever expect to look in such
a place?

------
chrisBob
Are you using a paid bit.ly account? They have instructions on getting a list
of all of the links you have created here:
[http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--
paid...](http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid-where-
can-i-find-a-list-of-the-links-i-have) It also seems like it should be
straight forward crawl all of the links your users have created to build your
own database of all of the URLs.

If you are not already a paying customer then I think they are letting you off
easy. You are basing a business on a freemium product and the free part just
ran out.

------
0x0
On the other hand: What if bit.ly shut down operations / went bankrupt / lost
all their data? Would that change anything for you?

This is like bit.ly shutting down. Except! If you pay a fee, they won't shut
down after all.

But I do agree that hiding pricing in small print is uncool.

------
quadlock
It's one thing to not read the whole TOS for services you consume and pay for,
but ignoring it when using it commercially? Don't blame them and call them
shady. They have to pay their employees and server costs to provide you the
service.

------
keehun
Time to scrape the URLs and resolve them yourself!

------
benmanns
If you keep track of either the short URL or the long URL somewhere on your
end, you can get the other part using bitly's link API:
[http://dev.bitly.com/links.html](http://dev.bitly.com/links.html) and the
associated metrics with the link metrics API:
[http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html](http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html)
\-- Once you have that, you can write a simple app (or use any of the free
ones out there) to provide the same service.

Or honestly, just pay the $700 if it's not worth the dev investment and
provides a significant value to your service.

------
hyperliner
Glad the OP is coming clean saying it's their fault, but calling bitly shady
for doing what they said they were going to do for the money that they said
they were going to charge (or not charge) seems like a low blow.

------
lnanek2
Not sure why they don't just brute force their data out. Back when Google was
hiding Google I/O redeem codes with goo.gl links, I brute forced thousands of
links out of that shortener, just using 20 lines of bash script. I was just
trying random codes and got one that led to a URL once per second or so.

So I could pull down 300k links in a few days. Their case would be a lot
quicker because it sounds like they have all the valid bit.ly links, just not
where they lead to.

------
tchai_
I'll tell you what's shady, using a non-commercial service heavily for
commercial gain and then expected them to roll-over and help you bugger off
else where.

------
dangoldin
Although it sucks I wouldn't claim it's a shady business model. It seems more
like the obvious one - make the custom URL option paid and they have their
pricing clearly laid out -
[https://bitly.com/a/pricing](https://bitly.com/a/pricing)

And you have a few days to crawl the URLs and see what you get.

~~~
davidblueit
the way the site is structured, the pricing only seems to be for the Bitly
Brand Tools. There doesn't seem any other pricing info for just link
shortening

------
JabavuAdams
This piece would come off a lot better with a "Hey startups did you know that
..." spin, rather than implying that there's anything shady about Bitly.

This is absolutely useful information, and thanks for sharing.

That said, calling the model "shady" or "not cool", etc. isn't really defused
by the writer's repeated mea culpas.

------
theboss
I'm curious. To people who have purchased bitly, why? I feel like setting it
up would take as long as writing your own. My very first web project I ever
did was to write a url shortener and it took me less than an afternoon. A good
engineer I'm sure could do it in less than an hour.

For the price, what does it get you?

------
leorocky
You could write your own exporter pretty trivially, using their API or
resolving the URLs.

------
abc123xyz
It would take a few hours of coding to throw together a url shortening service
just for your needs, and since no one else be using it the amount of coding is
trivial!

------
spacefight
I guess a few other businesses will be approached by them same way.

Running your own shorter sounds like a must these days.

------
trevorhinesley
This is 100% your fault.

------
cjslep
adf.ly has always seemed more shady to me than bit.ly.

