Google says its goo.gl URL shortener links will stop working after August 25, 2025; the company stopped generating new goo.gl URLs in March 2019
After Google stopped generating new goo.gl URLs in March of 2019, those links will stop working on August 25, 2025.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s stated cutoff completes a wind-down that began when goo.gl was closed to new users in 2018, while existing links were initially expected to keep redirecting. The change matters because short links often persist in documents, campaigns, and third-party embeds long after their creator stops managing them.
The planned blanket shutdown was later narrowed: Google said it would retain actively used goo.gl links. That reversal makes the story a useful record of both the dependency risk created by retiring link infrastructure and the operational pressure to preserve widely used redirects.
First-order effects
- At the announced deadline, publishers, businesses, and users relying on goo.gl URLs would need to replace or risk losing redirects for links not retained under Google’s later usage-based policy.
- Google must determine which links qualify as active and operate a narrower legacy redirect service rather than fully retiring goo.gl.
Second-order effects
- Organizations with old goo.gl links face an audit problem across archived content, printed materials, and external references, where replacing a destination URL may not be possible.
- The later preservation decision reduces immediate breakage but leaves link owners dependent on Google’s criteria, increasing the value of maintaining first-party, controllable URLs for durable references.
Third-order effects
- The episode highlights how discontinued web utilities can remain part of public and commercial infrastructure years after new creation ends; retirement plans increasingly need migration paths and exceptions for persistent usage.
- If large platforms continue to sunset legacy services selectively, URL durability may become less about a service’s formal status and more about opaque operational policies, encouraging organizations to avoid single-provider link dependencies.
The trend: Platform deprecations are shifting from clean shutdowns toward managed legacy support when long-lived links and embedded references prove too consequential to break.