Google is largely reversing course on its plans to stop supporting all shortened goo.gl URLs on August 25. Goo.gl URLs that are already showing a message that they will be deactivated in August will still stop working – the company started showing deactivation messages nine months ago on URLs that “have not been active at the end of 2024” – but otherwise “all other goo.gl links will be preserved and continue to function as normal,” Google announced on Friday.
Google, which stopped allowing users to create goo.gl URLs in 2019, originally announced the August 25 deactivation in July 2024. At the time, the company said that existing URLs were receiving “less and less traffic over the years” and that more than 99 percent of the URLs “have had no activity in the last month.” But in its Friday announcement, Google said that “we understand that these links are embedded in countless documents, videos, posts, and more, and we appreciate the information we’ve received.”
