Why do websites generate random alphanumeric strings for urls instead of using row ids?

Posted by jorm on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by jorm
Published on 2010-04-05T22:16:47Z Indexed on 2010/04/05 22:23 UTC
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identifier

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youtube

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url

Why does many sites (youtube is good example) generate string of random number and letter instead of using for example the row id?

usually its something likes this

bla?v=wli4l73Chc0

instead of like

bla?id=83934

Is it just to keep it short if you have many rows? Or is there other good things about this? Because i can imagine: bla?id=23934234234 dont look so nice

Thanks and cheers

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