When Google announced in 2018 that it was shutting down goo.gl, the company encouraged developers to migrate to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) — which has also since been deprecated.
I just don't get why you would bother to shut this down. A domain name costs nothing, and the entire infrastructure of the service is like one database table and 500 lines of code running on some FaaS platform. This is the easiest way to do click tracking, which is like 80% of their stupid business.
I suspect google's long game is to eliminate the concept of domains in the public mind and turn them entirely into background infrastructure. Who types in a domain? there is only search bar at top of chrome (the only browser). Google is the gatekeeper of all internet.
Very clever to leave the internet covered in broken links with your brand name.
