[HN Gopher] Git.io no longer accepts new URLs
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Git.io no longer accepts new URLs
Author : diogenesjunior
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-01-21 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.blog)
| cpach wrote:
| Do people still use URL shorteners...? I would guess the usage
| has declined in the past 10 years or so.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| They are useful for transactional SMS messages when you want to
| remind someone of an appointment or an event. There is a
| character limit in SMS if you want to keep it to one message
| and not annoy your customers.
| scrollaway wrote:
| They're also a great tool for that as transactional sms
| messages don't really have permanence, so the urls
| disappearing in the future is a non issue.
| jdlyga wrote:
| It's good for comments in code, and back in the old days of
| twitter before they added in native support for url's in tweets
| dewey wrote:
| I think it's bad for comments in code. If you have the full
| URL you could at least try to find an archived version for it
| on archive.org if the link shortener went away.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The archive.org link should be used in code comments imho.
| This ensures that the content in question has been
| archived, and points to the temporal snapshot.
| choward wrote:
| Couldn't archive.org go away some day though? It could
| disappear before the original site. This seems unlikely but
| it's possible.
|
| I'd rather link to the original but save it on archive.org
| as a backup. Of course whoever uses the broken link would
| have to know to go look it up on archive.org.
| hwers wrote:
| I guess it's a question of minimizing risks and it seems
| likely that
|
| risk of shorturl site going away > risk of website going
| away > risk of archive.org going away
| dewey wrote:
| Well that's always a possibility. The archive.org URL
| usually contains the full original URL so there's no
| downside of using it.
|
| In this case though, it's still just code documentation
| so ideally it should be somewhat possible to figure out
| what's going on without a link to an external site. It's
| just about minimizing the risk.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Most relevant sites provide their own short urls now. All 3rd
| party shorteners are monetized by tracking and selling the
| data, so I wouldn't be surprised nobody uses them.
| rsync wrote:
| I built a url shortened in 2016 and still maintain it now:
|
| 0x.co
|
| ... gets light usage ...
| swilliamsio wrote:
| Twitter's link shortener gets tonnes of use. Seems like every
| external link in every tweet is converted to a t.co link
| instead to save characters.
| SalimoS wrote:
| I'm sure that the real reason for Twitter to use t.co is
| analytics and more control over the platform.
| playpause wrote:
| That's just Twitter's redirection proxy. It's not people
| using it as a URL shortener. It is Twitter automatically
| linking all URLs in tweets to go via t.co for tracking.
| dewey wrote:
| No doubt that it's used for tracking but "clicks" on the URL
| could probably be measured in other on-page ways too. One
| additional reason is probably that if there's a spam URL
| detected they can just block the short URL and the problem
| goes away instantly.
| TimLeland wrote:
| If anyone is looking for an alternative URL Shortener you should
| checkout T.LY
|
| https://t.ly/
| teddyh wrote:
| Note: the .ly top-level domain is Libya. Perhaps not the best
| place to use as a single point of control for your addresses.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Aren't there downsides to using a Libyan TLD?
| wolpoli wrote:
| I guess that's another Url shortener for Archive Team [1] to
| backup
|
| [1]:https://wiki.archiveteam.org/
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Wow, git.io was the first product I found a vulnerability and
| sent a responsible disclosure, more than 10 years ago.
|
| They used to have a nice thank you page, but they got rid of it
| when they rolled out their bug bounty program.
|
| I wonder if this means git.io short links will be going away, I
| still use mine on my CV and elsewhere.
| latexr wrote:
| > I wonder if this means git.io short links will be going away
|
| From the announcement:
|
| > Existing URLs will continue to be accessible
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Yeah but for how long?
|
| That's like Google saying "G Suite Legacy will continue to be
| free..."
| beermonster wrote:
| Also from the announcement :
|
| ".. but we encourage using one of the many URL shortening
| services that are available, instead of git.io, as we will be
| deprecating the tool in the future."
| cxr wrote:
| Git.io (the "GitHub URL Shortener") was only ever for GitHub-
| hosted projects to use, which had the effect of further
| conflating GitHub and Git to an even worse degree. It always
| struck me as borderline scummy, since GitHub was of course aware
| of this, but then again they've knowingly benefited from
| misconceptions about the Git/GitHub relationship for a long time,
| so it's not out of line with the established MO.
| pizza234 wrote:
| Several companies have their own URL shorteners (Amazon,
| Youtube...); this is nothing new or wrong.
|
| It's actually reassuring to know that one can it in the code
| (comments) knowing that the service provider doesn't do
| anything dodgy and that the links are reasonably long-lived (as
| a matter of fact, Github is not discontinuing already existing
| URLs).
| blendergeek wrote:
| If GitHub had wanted a GitHub specific URL shortener and did
| not want to further perpetuate confusion about the
| relationship between git and GitHub, they could have gone
| with gh.io, ghub.io, hub.io, or any other domain name that
| isn't 'git.io'. 'git.io' _sounds_ like it would probably be
| an official domain of 'git'. But, 'git.io' is (was) actually
| a URL shortener for a specific hosted service whose only
| relationship to 'git' is that GitHub uses the 'git' software
| for version control. GitHub is not maintained by the git team
| nor is it a project of the git team. Git can be (and is
| widely) used outside of GitHub.
|
| GP is not complaining about a GitHub specific url shortener.
| quadrangle wrote:
| That's not what the other comment was complaining about. If
| it were GitHub.io that would be fine.
|
| They are saying that GitHub has had a long interest in people
| thinking that Git is something you only do with GitHub,
| reducing people from thinking about using Git without GitHub.
| Of course, to be clear, Git is a 100% independent project
| that existed before GitHub and GitHub has ZERO claim to
| anything about Git, it just _uses_ it.
| cxr wrote:
| How you walked away with the understanding you apparently did
| based on what I wrote is a mystery.
|
| Git [?] GitHub; claiming the git.io domain and then using it
| exclusively for GitHub URLs is distasteful.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| They're not discontinuing them _for now_. You already can 't
| create new URLs, but they will be deprecating the service "in
| the future". What does that entail?
| rezonant wrote:
| I hate when "deprecate" is used to mean "remove" (if that's
| what's happening here).
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| "deprecate" and "remove" are not synonymous and I don't
| see any indication they are being conflated here.
| Deprecation often precedes removal but that's the extent
| of it.
|
| Deprecation generally means continued use of
| tool/API/etc. is actively discouraged. Users of a
| deprecated tool/API/etc. should find a suitable
| alternative for all their remaining use cases. In this
| case, once this shortener is officially deprecated,
| anyone using a git.io URL for any purpose should replace
| it with an alternative.
|
| Deprecation is usually a precursor to removal. Once the
| tool/API/etc. has been deprecated long enough (relatively
| speaking), it's generally consider as safe as practical
| to remove the tool/API/etc. from service. That lead time
| can range anywhere from months to years.
| rezonant wrote:
| Yes that's the way I use the word as well, it is a pet
| peeve of mine when that is not the case.
|
| > "deprecate" and "remove" are not synonymous and I don't
| see any indication they are being conflated here.
| Deprecation often precedes removal but that's the extent
| of it.
|
| The reason I'm equating "deprecate" and "remove" in this
| case is because they have already said there will be no
| more git.io links created -- so how can you "deprecate"
| it further? I suppose they could say "Hey, this is
| deprecated now and we're going to shut it down in six
| months", and in this case, the user behavior that is
| discouraged is "relying on the links".
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Very reminiscent of Google's `web.dev` site, which I find
| almost disgusting.
| ufo wrote:
| Does anyone know where one may find more info about what git.io
| used to be and why it might have been deprecated?
| remram wrote:
| https://github.blog/2011-11-10-git-io-github-url-shortener/
|
| It was a URL-shortening service for GitHub URLs. Nothing more,
| nothing less. You would put in a URL, and get a new, short URL
| git.io/... that would redirect to what you put in.
| iRomain wrote:
| IMO, they've found a better use of the domain. Maybe something
| a la web.dev?
| rusbus wrote:
| Am I the only one who has never heard of nor seen a git.io
| shortened URL?
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| This post was my first introduction to it too. Searching for
| "git.io" on github.com, including the quotes, returns a number
| of repositories using git.io links -- "2M+" if their search is
| to be believed.
| city41 wrote:
| I'd never heard of it either, and I'm a very active github
| user. There's just so much "stuff" out there now, there's no
| way to keep track of it all.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| I do wish any time there was a service deprecation notice, the
| service providers would give some detail as to why it's going
| offline. Lack of use, difficulty to maintain, expense, etc. With
| that said, I don't think we're owed any explanation, especially
| for free-to-use services.
|
| Specific to this service, I never personally used it, but I
| wonder how many project links will break when the service does
| finally go offline.
| maupin wrote:
| Sounds like that would be an excellent resource for me to learn
| about services that - now that they're being retired - I could
| wish I knew about a few years earlier...
| gkoberger wrote:
| For anyone curious, I found this early blog post announcing it.
|
| https://github.blog/2011-11-10-git-io-github-url-shortener/
|
| It seems like it was built by some Github employees back during
| the URL shortening phase as just a fun hack project to learn a
| new database, although a few services implemented it to shorten
| Github URLs.
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| No, no, no. Didn't you read the rest of this thread! This was
| all part of a well coordinated, thought out, grand conspiracy
| to place github.com as the de-facto git repository. Not some
| late night, quick turnaround, "hey, this would be cool" project
| created by two people for lulz. After all, it would be
| impossible to create an effective URL shortener with one
| developer and a late night with a case of beer (no...don't look
| at me, it took me a day and a half).
|
| Get with the narrative!
| cxr wrote:
| Who is making the kind of claims that you claim they're
| making?
| nmjohn wrote:
| I would say your comment (which is currently the top
| comment on this post) thread is not far off from what
| cwbrandsma is somewhat hyperbolically saying.
|
| > It always struck me as borderline scummy, since GitHub
| was of course aware of this, but then again they've
| knowingly benefited from misconceptions about the
| Git/GitHub relationship for a long time
|
| To me that very much implies the thought out plan to place
| github as the defacto git repo that cwbrandsma was
| describing.
| cxr wrote:
| > not far off from what cwbrandsma is somewhat
| hyperbolically saying
|
| Calling that comment "somewhat hyperbolic" is an
| understatement.
| [deleted]
| connor4312 wrote:
| This is a sad day for me. The obscurity of git.io, along with its
| nested obscurity of the ability to create vanity links, let me
| grab https://git.io/8. It looks like that'll go away one day, I
| wonder what will become of the domain itself; it's certainly a
| six figure property.
| remram wrote:
| I remember there being a form to create a URL (which would get
| you a random git.io/xxx) but picking your short URL had to go
| through an API. At least that's how I created mine.
| dapak wrote:
| I wish there was more background on what/why git.io was a thing,
| as well as why it's now being discontinued in this announcement.
| First time hearing of this service.
| tyingq wrote:
| I think this is the original 2011 announcement:
|
| https://github.blog/2011-11-10-git-io-github-url-shortener/
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(page generated 2022-01-21 23:02 UTC)