miji.beOn August 25, 2025, Google's short URL service "goo.gl" completely stopped. Billions of short URLs generated over 16 years simultaneously became dead links. Clicking a goo.gl link now shows "This service has been discontinued" instead of redirecting.
Google announced goo.gl's end in March 2018, stopped new URL generation in March 2019, and maintained existing redirects temporarily. In August 2024, they announced all redirects would stop on August 25, 2025. Despite 7 years of notice, countless goo.gl links across websites, blog posts, social media, and printed materials were left unupdated. Stack Overflow alone contained tens of thousands of answers with goo.gl links, all now broken.
Before goo.gl, many services met similar fates. tr.im announced shutdown after just months in 2009. Digg's short URL service vanished with Digg's decline. Yahoo's y.ahoo.it ended during Yahoo's service consolidation.
Service shutdowns hit academic papers and government documents hardest. A 2014 study found about 21% of short URLs in academic papers were already broken. The US Library of Congress reported short URL link rot as a major challenge in their tweet archiving project.
How to prepare for service "death"? Own your domain and run your own short URL service. Use Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Record both short URLs and original URLs for important links. Short URLs are convenient but not eternal.