| Link shorteners are called like this because they shorten the life of links. I'll paste mgdlbp's comment from 21 days ago [1] (about git.io deprecation, which in the end is kept read-only and isn't simply turned off as originally planned): The problems with url shorteners https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=545565 – 2009-04 (56 comments) URL Shorteners – the herpes of the web https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=570041 – 2009-04 (17 comments) Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=660087 – 2009-06 (57 comments) URL Shorteners are evil, here's one to prove it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=904941 – 2009-10 (57 comments) – ironically dead Link shorteners hurt the user experience and destroy the Web https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7803290 – 2014-05 (89 comments) – dead The URL shortener situation is out of control https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836626 – 2014-06 (78 comments) URL shorteners set ad tracking cookies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25624112 – 2021-01 (207 comments) Link shorteners: the long and short of why you shouldn’t use them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462261 – 2021-06 (145 comments) There are very few places where you actually need a link to be short, and that's mostly for printed documents or posters. At this point, if you also edit the website, you can build a small and nice URL from your domain. WordPress has a free redirection extension that makes it easy for non-technical users as well. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31163972 |