Google has stated that it would discontinue support for its URL shortening service, goo.gl, on August 25, 2025.
Google stated in a blog post that “the time has come to turn off the serving portion of Google URL Shortener” and that any links in the https://goo.gl/* format will return a 404 error next year.
This decision signals the end of an era for a programme that has been useful in sharing information and analysing online traffic since its inception in 2009.
Google launched the goo.gl URL shortener service in 2009 to make it easier and more efficient for consumers to share URLs.
The service immediately became popular, allowing customers to generate short, manageable URLs that were simple to distribute and track. This was especially handy for social media, email, and other venues where character count was important.
According to Google’s latest developer blog post, beginning just over a month from now, on Friday, August 23, goo.gl links will display an interstitial page (a page that appears before the target homepage), informing users that “this link will no longer work in the near future.” The end-of-support date is slated for August 25, 2025.
“For example, if you are using other 302 redirects, the interstitial page may prevent the redirect flow from completing correctly.
“If you’ve embedded social metadata in your destination page, the interstitial page will likely cause these to no longer show up where the initial link is displayed. For this reason, we advise transitioning these links as soon as possible,” the statement said.
This means that websites that previously relied on Google’s service may have to remove such URL-shortened links or risk them not working.
It will not be a problem for newer sites that have never used it, but it will be a problem for older, legacy sites, highlighting the fact that the internet may no longer be the greatest permanent archive or repository, at least not anymore.
We earlier reported that Italy’s antitrust commission has begun an inquiry into Google and its parent company Alphabet for alleged unfair economic practices concerning user data.
