I've used the goo.gl URL shortener for a while to create short links for all manner of things, but especially for sharing links to this blog on the social medias. So, it was to my surprise when I went to create one yesterday for my most recent post, that I saw the announcement that they are terminating their service, in favour of their Firebase product.

All I need is a quick way to create short URLs, and for the life of me I couldn't even figure out how to create one as they suggest using a 'dynamic link' with Firebase. Maybe I'm getting old, but after a quick 5 minutes of reading, I'm not even sure what Firebase does, and how it's relevant to a person that just wants to create short URLs.

So I created an account on bit.ly for my short URLs, and noticed that they let you use a custom 'branded' domain on their service for free. I had a look around on a few registrars to try to conjure together a short name-plus-TLD combination, but most of the really short TLDs were too expensive. The cheapest and decent one I settled on was costi.link at around USD$9/year. Yes, it's only six characters less than setting up a subdomain on lucascosti.com for the same purpose, but I was having a bit of fun at this point.

So without further ado, you may be seeing some costi.link URLs in the future, starting with the short URL to this post: costi.link/2GGOYx4