[mrcslws]

From the blog post: "more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month" https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-li...

This is a classic product data decision-making fallacy. The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".

[bayindirh]

> The right question is "how much total value do all of the links provide", not "what percent are used".

Yes, but it doesn't bring in the sweet promotion home, unfortunately. Ironically, if 99% of them doesn't see any traffic, you can scale back the infra, run it in 2 VMs, and make sure a single person can keep it up as a side quest, just for fun (but, of course, pay them for their work).

This beancounting really makes me sad.

[quesera]

Configuring a static set of redirects would take a couple hours to set up, and literally zero maintenance forever.

Amazon should volunteer a free-tier EC2 instance to help Google in their time of economic struggles.

[socalgal2]

If they wanted the sweat promotion they could add an interstitial. Yes, people would complain, but at least the old links would not stop working.

[ahstilde]

> just for fun (but, of course, pay them for their work).

Doing things for fun isn't in Google's remit

[HPsquared]

Indeed. I've probably looked at less than 1% of my family photos this month but I still want to keep them.

[sltkr]

I bet 99% of URLs that exist on the public web had no activity last month. Might as well delete the entire WWW because it's obviously worthless.

[chneu]

Where'd all my porn go!?

[SoftTalker]

From Google's perspective, the question is "How many ads are we selling on these links" and if it's near zero, that's the value to them.

[fizx]

Don't be confused! That's not how they made the decision; it's how they're selling it.

[esafak]

So how did they decide?

[firefax]

> "more than 99% of them had no activity in the last month"

Better to have a short URL and not need it, than need a short URL and not have it IMO.

[esafak]

What fraction of indexed Google sites, Youtube videos, or Google Photos were retrieved in the last month? Think of the cost savings!

[nomel]

Youtube already does this, to some extent, by slowly reduce the quality of your videos, if they're not accessed frequently enough.

Many videos I uploaded in 4k are now only available in 480p, after about a decade.

[handsclean]

I don’t think they’re actually that dumb. I think the dirty secret behind “data driven decision making” is managers don’t want data to tell them what to do, they want “data” to make even the idea of disagreeing with them look objectively wrong and stupid.

[HPsquared]

It's a bit like the the difference between "rule of law" and "rule by law" (aka legalism).

It's less "data-driven decisions", more "how to lie with statistics".

[FredPret]

"Data-driven decision making"