It may help prevent linkjacking. If an old URL no longer works, but the goo.gl link is still available, it's possible that someone could take over the URL and use it for malicious. Consider a scenario like this:
1. Years ago, Acme Corp sets up an FAQ page and creates a goo.gl link to the FAQ.
2. Acme goes out of business. They take the website down, but the goo.gl link is still accessible on some old third-party content, like social media posts.
3. Eventually, the domain registration lapses, and a bad actor takes over the domain.
4. Someone stumbles across a goo.gl link in a reddit thread from a decade ago and clicks it. Instead of going to Acme, they now go to a malicious site full of malware.
With the new policy, if enough time has passed without anyone clicking on the link, then Google will deactivate it, and the user in step 4 would now get a 404 from Google instead.
Goo.gl was a terrible idea in the first place because it lends Google's apparent legitimacy (in the eyes of the average "noob") to unmoderated content that could be malicious. That's probably why they at least stopped allowing new ones to be made. By allowing old ones, they can't rule out the Google brand being used to scam and phish.
e.g. Imagine SMS or email saying "We've received your request to delete your Google account effective (insert 1 hour's time). To cancel your request, just click here and log into your account: https://goo.gl/ASDFjkl
This was a very popular strategy for phishing and it's still possible if you can find old links that go to hosts that are NXDOMAIN and unregistered, of which there are no doubt millions.
Only insofar as Google might wish to prevent it since their brand was on the shortened url you clicked to get there. And people not having malware is surely good for Google indirectly.
Presumably ACME used the link shortener because they wanted to put the shortened link somewhere, so someone’s going to click things like these. If Google can just delete a lot of it why not?
It creates a good entry in the promo package for that Google manager. "Successfully conducted cost saving measure, cutting down the spend on the link shortener service by 70%". Of course, hoping that no one will check the actual numbers.
They’re not shutting down a product, they’re removing old links.
I’m not defending it, just that I can absolutely imagine Google PMs making a chart of “$ saved vs clicks” and everyone slapping each other on the back and saying good job well done.
I find even this incredibly stingy... Back of the envelope:
1043*1000000000 / (1023^3)
10 4 byte characters times 3 billion links, dividing by 1 GB of memory...
Roughly 111 GB of RAM.
Which is like nothing to a search giant.
To put that into perspective, my Desktop Computer's max Mobo memory is 128 GB, so saying it has to do with RAM is like saying they needed to shut off a couple servers...and save like maybe a thousand dollars.
This reeks of something else, if not just sheer ineptitude...
> Roughly 111 GB of RAM. Which is like nothing to a search giant.
You are forgetting job replication. A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters.
Saving 111TiB of RAM can probably pay your salary forever. I think I paid mine with fewer savings while there. During covid there was a RAM shortage too enough to have a call to prefer trading CPU to save RAM with changes to the rule of thumb resource costs.
> A global service can easily have 100s of jobs on 10-20 datacenters.
There's obviously, something in between maintaining the latency with 20 datacenter, increasing the latency a bit reducing hosting to a couple $100 worth of servers, and setting the latency to infinity, which was the original plan.
I'm guessing that they ran out of leeway with small tweaks and found that breaking inactive links was probably a better way out. We don't know the hit rates of what they call inactive nor the real cost it takes to keep them around.
A service like this is probably on maintenance mode too, so simplifying it to use fewer resources probably makes sense, and I bet the PMs are happy about shorter links, since at some point you are better off not using a link shortener and instead just use a QR code in fear of inconvenience and typos.
1. Years ago, Acme Corp sets up an FAQ page and creates a goo.gl link to the FAQ.
2. Acme goes out of business. They take the website down, but the goo.gl link is still accessible on some old third-party content, like social media posts.
3. Eventually, the domain registration lapses, and a bad actor takes over the domain.
4. Someone stumbles across a goo.gl link in a reddit thread from a decade ago and clicks it. Instead of going to Acme, they now go to a malicious site full of malware.
With the new policy, if enough time has passed without anyone clicking on the link, then Google will deactivate it, and the user in step 4 would now get a 404 from Google instead.