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Coding Horror: Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002 - The Diigo Meta page

www.codinghorror.com/...001276.html - Cached - Annotated View

Joel Liu's personal annotations on this page

joel
Joel bookmarked on 2009-07-05 bitly URL Sharing stats

  • This is dangerous territory we're veering into now, as Joshua Schachter explains.



    So there are clear benefits for both the service (low cost of entry, potentially easy profit) and the linker (the quick rush of popularity). But URL shorteners are bad for the rest of us.


    The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher's DNS server, and the publisher's website. With a shortening service, you're adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL, without the benevolent oversight of luminaries like Dan Kaminsky and St. Postel.

  • Every tiny URL is another baby step towards destroying the web as we know it. Which is exactly what you'd want to do if you're attempting to build a business on top of the ruins. Personally, I'd prefer to see the big, objective search engines who naturally sit at the center of the web offer their own URL shortening services. Who better to generate short hashes of every possible URL than the companies who already have cached copies of every URL on the internet, anyway?

This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Jun 2009, by someone privately.

  • 05 Jul 09
    joel
    Joel Liu

    bitly URL Sharing stats

    • This is dangerous territory we're veering into now, as Joshua Schachter explains.



      So there are clear benefits for both the service (low cost of entry, potentially easy profit) and the linker (the quick rush of popularity). But URL shorteners are bad for the rest of us.


      The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher's DNS server, and the publisher's website. With a shortening service, you're adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL, without the benevolent oversight of luminaries like Dan Kaminsky and St. Postel.

    • Every tiny URL is another baby step towards destroying the web as we know it. Which is exactly what you'd want to do if you're attempting to build a business on top of the ruins. Personally, I'd prefer to see the big, objective search engines who naturally sit at the center of the web offer their own URL shortening services. Who better to generate short hashes of every possible URL than the companies who already have cached copies of every URL on the internet, anyway?