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dwyl / cid

❄️cid ("content id") is a human-friendly (readable/typeable) unique ID function built for distributed/decentralised systems.
GNU General Public License v2.0
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How does (did) Google's Short URL Service (goo.gl) Use 6 AlphaNumeric Characters? #3

Closed nelsonic closed 5 years ago

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Question: How Many Links Can be Shortened with 6 Characters?

Answer 1: Without Collision Avoidance -> Not Very Many!

According to the "Birthday Paradox" image

Answer 2: With Database Collision Detection -> 56.8 Billion

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=62%5E6 image

tl;dr

Last year Google announced discontinuing support for their Short URL service https://goo.gl https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-google-url-shortener.html

I used to use the service: image

It's not the first time Google has discontinued a product/service and it definitely won't be the last ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services

I downloaded the CSV of the links I created for one of my accounts: image

I understand that Google has little to benefit from maintaining/running this service ... But how much does it really cost to run the service given their vast infrastructure...?

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

Read: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11326598/how-do-url-shorteners-guarantee-unique-urls-when-they-dont-expire

nelsonic commented 5 years ago

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