Google has just announced the sunset date for shortened goo.gl links, and there's still time to migrate
    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      5 months ago

      I really hope nobody used shortened links in href attributes. That would be stupid.

      • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
        46·
        5 months ago

        Don’t worry. There’s a high chance at least one critical software has a shortened link somewhere in their infrastructure.

      • Deebster@programming.devEnglish
        12·
        5 months ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some service that gave out shortened links by default and people just used those everywhere. Lots of people are clueless about how URLs work, and authoring HTML often means filling in a form.

      • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        On this planet, it seems that there is nothing so stupid that you won’t find someone doing it, alas.

    • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      as if millions of voices links voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

    • Land_Strider@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      5 months ago

      I skim this page every time it is posted, but this time scrolling the whole length of it even as fast as I can gave me depression. 295 projects, almost half of them killed in the last 5 years.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        5 months ago

        I don’t think any other company is based on trial and error to the same degree as Google.
        It’s kind of funny, since Google was originally based on hiring the greatest capacities within their field. So you should think they were pretty smart.
        But trial and error is actually the LEAST INTELLIGENT method to solve a problem.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
          12·
          5 months ago

          I think they’re mostly doing it to get the attention of investors. New products are exciting. It shows the company is growing.

          Look at our new self driving car we will definitely release within the next year! Or how about these stupid looking glasses?

          But now investors have become more concerned about profitability, so most tech companies are focusing on cutting the costs.

          • palordrolap@kbin.run
            2·
            5 months ago

            A combination of browser settings and exceptionally rare usage of short link providers - as creator or user - means I’m not completely sure about this, but … were they putting ads on the short links somehow?

            Because I figure if they weren’t they should have tried that.

            And if they were, how expensive is running a short link service anyway? This feels like rummaging around in the sofa for loose change. Smacks of desperation.

            • RobotZap10000@feddit.nlEnglish
              1·
              5 months ago

              I suspect that they build a profile of what websites you visit and sell that data for targeted advertising.

  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    5 months ago

    I’ve only ever seen goog.le looks used in spam and phishing emails, so I’m not particularly sad about this

    Of course, there’s roughly eighty million other folks who think they’ve each done a short link provider better, somehow, so this won’t make much of a difference beyond not relying on the bots at Google to deal with abuse problems.