Google will not kill your goo.gl links on one condition

Back in 2018, Google announced the deprecation of its URL shortener, goo.gl, and prevented new users from creating new links. At the time, the company claimed that this was because the ways people share content had "evolved."

By July 2024, we got an official date: 25th August, 2025 was set as the day every last one of these links would die, returning a 404 error. The company had already started flagging links that showed no activity in late 2024; following one of these would show an interstitial page with a header that read "This link will no longer work in the near future."

Now, as we draw close to the deadline, the company is back with an update. Google is walking back its original "kill everything" plan. The company will preserve actively used goo.gl links, a decision that comes after significant user feedback. Maybe the prospect of causing widespread link rot by breaking links in what the Mountain View giant calls "countless documents, videos, posts" finally registered.

According to the new policy, if your goo.gl link shows that interstitial warning page, it will not work after August 25. But if it currently does not show that message, Google says it will "function as normal" and continue to redirect. The quickest way to verify this is to visit the link yourself and see what happens.

This reversal makes sense when you consider the sheer scale of the service. The goo.gl URL shortener was quite popular in its day and was even used by Google for its products like Maps and Google Business Profile for sharing locations and business information.

According to backlink tool provider Majestic, a staggering 3.6 billion goo.gl links have been created over the years. Deleting all of them would have been an apocalypse for archivists and anyone relying on old content.

It certainly did not help that Google's recommended replacement, Firebase Dynamic Links, is also being discontinued on the same day.