Design a URL Shortener
MediumSystem design · Read-Heavy Services · Amazon
Design a URL shortener like Bitly or TinyURL. Users can create short links for long URLs, and visitors can resolve short links with very low latency.
Requirements
- Clarify custom aliases, expiration, analytics, and abuse controls before including them
- Generate collision-safe short codes that can scale to billions of links
- Optimize the redirect path for low latency and high availability
- Discuss storage schema, caching, hot keys, and regional replication