Taking into account this metric could be exposed by not one, but by thousands of applications, the metrics collector will have to parse and allocate in memory same strings over and over! var internStringsMap = make ( map [ string ] string ) func intern ( s string ) string { m := internStringsMap if v , ok := m [ s ]; ok { return v } m [ s ] = s return s } Map func intern ( s string ) string { m := & internStringsMap interned , _ := m .