Millions of links will stop working next year as a consequence of Google shutting down its URL Shortener service goo.gl.

Google announced the change on its Developer blog this week. According to the post, goo.gl links will stop working on August 25th, 2025. Starting next month, users will see an interstitial page that informs them about the upcoming termination of the service.

The page says "this link will no longer work in the near future". Users have the option to continue to the link target and to check "don't show this again" to skip the warning page until August 25, 2025.

Google says that the interstitial page may cause interruptions to certain workflows, including:

• If 302 redirects are used, the interstitial page may prevent the redirect flow from completing correctly.
• Embedded social metadata in the destination page may also likely not be shown anymore where the initial link is displayed.

Developers who notice interruptions may append the parameter si=1 to the query to skip the interstitial page. Note that this will only work until August 25, 2025.

Google URL Shortener

Google launched its URL Shortener in 2010. First used by Google Toolbar and Feedburner, it became later available for public use. I checked it out in 2010, even created a Ghack link -- https://goo.gl/pKTg -- and concluded that it was not really something that the world needed.

Google switched to a different internal system and stopped accepting new users since April 2018. One year later, Google turned off the service for existing customers.

While it did so, it did not touch the shortened links at the time. This changes next year with the termination of all shortened links.

Goo.gl URL Shortener alternatives

Developers and users who rely on goo.gl shortened links are advised to replace them as soon as possible.

Several alternatives exist, including:

• TinyURL - Been around for a long time. Offers a free account, which has a 100 URLs per month limit.
• Bitly - good for just 10 links per month, but maybe sufficient for some.

Closing Words

The number of existing goo.gl redirects that still work is unclear. Considering that Google stopped accepting new links in 2019, it is likely that a good percentage of links is no longer valid.

With that said, considering that Google and users created links for almost a decade, it is certain that a large number of links is still working and used.

Some of these will be replaced using direct links or other URL shortening services. Others will stop working next year and no one will know to which resource on the Internet they linked to.

What about you? Have you used URL shortening services recently? Or do you still use shortened URLs actively? Let us know in the comments down below!