goo.gl

Google's link shortener, and the day old links died

Zombie
19902026

goo.gl was Google's URL shortener, launched in 2009 and woven into countless tweets, QR codes, academic papers and forum posts. Google stopped new shortening in 2019, then announced dormant goo.gl links would die on 25 August 2025, sparing only links that still saw traffic after an outcry over link rot.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2009
  2. 14 December 2009 Launch
    goo.gl launches

    First inside Toolbar and FeedBurner.

  3. 2010
  4. 30 September 2010 Feature
    Public standalone service

    Analytics and QR codes for every shortened link.

  5. 2018
  6. 30 March 2018 Shutdown announced
    Wind-down announced

    New users lose access; Firebase Dynamic Links is the anointed successor.

  7. 2019
  8. 30 March 2019 Decline
    Link creation ends

    Existing redirects continue to work.

  9. 2024
  10. 18 July 2024 Shutdown announced
    Link deactivation announced

    All goo.gl links to stop resolving in August 2025; link-rot outcry follows.

  11. 2025
  12. 1 August 2025 Revival
    Partial reprieve

    Actively used links are spared; dormant ones keep their expiry date.

  13. 25 August 2025 Shutdown
    Dormant goo.gl links go dark

    References across old tweets, papers and posts break permanently.

The site through time

Browse goo.gl as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2009 2012 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Google 2009–2025 Founded Wound down in favour of Firebase Dynamic Links

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google closed goo.gl to new links in 2019 and announced that dormant links would stop resolving on 25 August 2025; after public pushback, links still in active use were spared.

Our analysis: A link shortener is a promise that a URL will work forever, and Google walked away from the promise in stages. The 2025 deactivation of dormant links broke references across old tweets, papers and forum posts, a case study in what dies when infrastructure is retired.

History [edit]

Shortening the web

goo.gl appeared on 14 December 2009, first inside Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, then in September 2010 as a standalone service with analytics and QR codes. It was fast, spam-filtered and stamped with Google's supposed permanence, which is why it ended up everywhere URLs needed to be small: tweets in the 140-character era, printed QR codes, SMS campaigns, slide decks, and citations in academic papers.

In 2018 Google announced the wind-down in favour of Firebase Dynamic Links (which would later be discontinued too); existing users could create links until 30 March 2019. The redirects, Google said then, would keep working.

The expiry date on "forever"

In July 2024 Google revised the promise: all goo.gl links would stop resolving on 25 August 2025. The reaction was immediate, because nobody can update a link printed in a 2012 conference paper or buried in an old tweet. Archivists (including Archive Team) raced to crawl hundreds of millions of mappings. On 1 August 2025 Google partially relented: links that still showed activity would keep working, while dormant ones would die on schedule, showing a warning interstitial first. On 25 August 2025 the dormant majority of goo.gl went dark, a quiet mass extinction of references across the web.

Similar projects

GeoCities Your neighborhood on the early web 1994–2009 Delicious The web's shared memory 2003–2017 Google Reader The web, in one place 2005–2013 Adobe Flash The plugin that animated the web 1996–2020 Google Wave Email, reinvented too hard 2009–2012 iGoogle Your homepage, back when you had one 2005–2013

Sources [edit]

  1. We're updating our plans for goo.gl links Google 1 August 2025 [archived]
  2. Google's goo.gl links will stop working in August 2025 9to5Google 18 July 2024

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).