Terence Eden’s Blog<p><strong>Never use a URL shortening service - even if you own it</strong><br><a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/never-use-a-url-shortening-service-even-if-you-own-it/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/never-use-a-url-shortening-service-even-if-you-own-it/</a></p><p>The Guardian launched its online adventures back in 1999. At some point, they started using the name "Guardian Unlimited". Hey, the dot com boom made us all do crazy things! As part of that branding, they proudly used the domain GU.com</p><p>Over time, the branding faded and GU.com became a URL shortening service. Tiny URls like <code>gu.com/abc</code> could be printed in papers, sent via SMS, or posted on Twitter. They made <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2010/may/05/twitter-short-urls" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a huge fanfare about how it would help with analytics</a>.</p><p>You can <a href="https://twitter.com/revdancatt/status/1572270482837196802" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">read some of the history of the shortner</a> to understand why it was created.</p><p>And now, for reasons best known to themselves, The Gaurdian have stopped the service and <a href="https://gu.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">put GU.com up for sale</a>.</p><p>The starting price is TWO AND HALF MILLION DOLLARS!</p><p>Look, if I had an asset that valuable and was looking at declining revenue, I'd sell it.</p><p>But breaking that URl comes with a problem. I've written before about <a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/bitly-finally-starts-taking-privacy-seriously/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">why URl shortening is bad for users and bad for the web.</a> I've even helped publish <a href="https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/blog/link-shorteners-the-long-and-short-of-why-you-shouldnt-use-them/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">government guidance</a> about it. But all of those were based on the premise that the shortener was a 3rd party service. I never thought someone would be as daft as to switch off their own service.</p><p>Here are some of the problems this sale causes.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/edent/status/1560621791470448642" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></p><p>Is there a tweet somewhere of a future politician saying "I support this 100% GU.com/...."? Redirect that to something horrific and you have a potential scandal on your hand.</p><p>There are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%22&btnG=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lots of academic papers with <code>gu.com</code> shortened links</a>. Those are all now dead.</p><p>Millions of links around the web - including many <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22gu.com%22+site%3Atheguardian.com" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>on the Grauniad itself</em></a> - are all now broken.</p><p>The Guarrdian could fix this by publishing a list of all the shortened URls. That wouldn't stop links breaking, but would make it possible for researchers to reconstruct the original destination.</p><p>For decades, we've tried to remind people that "<a href="https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cool URls Don't Change</a>". We'll just have to hope that the people of the future find a way to decipher all these obsolete links.</p><p><a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/never-use-a-url-shortening-service-even-if-you-own-it/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/never-use-a-url-shortening-service-even-if-you-own-it/</a></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/guardian/" target="_blank">#guardian</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/hyperlinks/" target="_blank">#hyperlinks</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/newspapers/" target="_blank">#newspapers</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/url/" target="_blank">#url</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/web/" target="_blank">#web</a></p>