Google's kiss of death is coming for your goo.gl links

In typical Google fashion, the company killed its goo.gl short link generator on March 30, 2019. Since then, users have still been able to access goo.gl links created before the generator’s shutdown. However, this will change next year, as Google will completely sunset the service, breaking the short links in the process.

Google has announced (via 9to5Google) that starting August 25, 2025, users will no longer be able to access goo.gl links. Instead of redirecting clicks to the assigned URLs, the service will return a 404 response when accessed from a phone, tablet, or other device.

On August 23, 2024, Google will gradually start showing an interstitial page when users visit a goo.gl link to prepare them for the shutdown. As shown in the screenshot above, the page warns visitors about the service’s upcoming discontinuation and allows them to dismiss it. If you still rely on the goo.gl service and don’t want Google to show the interstitial page, you could add the query param “si=1” to your links. The company explains:

Note that the interstitial page may cause disruptions in the current flow of your goo.gl links. For example, if you are using other 302 redirects, the interstitial page may prevent the redirect flow from completing correctly. If you’ve embedded social metadata in your destination page, the interstitial page will likely cause these to no longer show up where the initial link is displayed. For this reason, we advise transitioning these links as soon as possible.

By the time Google retires goo.gl next year, it will have been more than six years since the last short link was generated. This period is long enough for both individual users and large teams to migrate to alternative solutions. Some of the most commonly used options include Bitly, TinyURL, and Short.io.