Jumping into the Wayback Machine to the year 2010, Google introduced a means of shortening URLs. Since they’d purchased the goo.gl
domain name, they took advantage of this plus an abbreviated means of issuing shorter URLs. The shorter URL would then redirect to the actual target address.
Why?
You might ask why Google would create a seemingly-free service that would redirect URLs for people. Part of it could be explained by re-using a domain name that sounds a lot like Google as a form of advertising their brand name. But the strongest reason would be to build a database of URLs which could be mined in some way, perhaps for their own search engine’s optimization.
It’s clear that analytics was a big reason for offering a service like this. There is value in knowing everything about what other people are doing.
And den?
Good question. What comes next after the Internet has then embraced the concept and created millions of shorter links? You guessed it…
Google is killing the [goo.gl] service in March of 2019.
What will break?
It’s difficult to even fathom how much of the Internet will take a hit in three months. People routinely used these shorter URLs in combination with both Google Drive— and Microsoft OneDrive—related documents. There are numerous one-off solutions which automatically submit URLs to goo.gl vicariously for you. These should be the first things to break.
Google will likely continue to redirect links for a while but they will eventually need to pull the plug.
Imagine the sheer number of times these shorter URLs were used in printed documentation to refer back to online support pages. This would have been typical of many consumer products with small printed manuals. Imagine the number of boxed consumer products still sitting on shelves in stores which contain these soon-to-be-deprecated links.
Is that it?
Google is now moving the service over to Firebase (which they bought in 2015) as Dynamic Links which presumably few people will use since they’re not Google Developers.