Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Unveils goo.gl URL Shortening Service

Posted by timothy on from the boiling-a-frog-in-google dept.

eldavojohn writes "The Sultan of Search is unveiling a new service (currently only available for Google Toolbar and Feedburner) that will tackle a very old problem usually solved by bit.ly or tinyurl — URL shortening. Now, we've heard cries for sanity to prevent potential issues (like what if tr.im had shut down and broken millions of links?) but with one of the goliaths of the industry jumping in the ring it looks like URL shortening is here to stay. And a quick note for people who enjoy privacy, goo.gl explicitly states: 'Please note that Google may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end user clicks.' You didn't think Google was going to sit back and let bit.ly harvest juicy data on 2.1 billion links that were clicked in November without trying to corner some of that action to make their ad suggestions more accurate, did you?" Google's shortening service is called Goo.gl.

17 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Other services work fine by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I, for one, will be avoiding this. Existing services work fine and this is one more way Google is headed towards info omniscience.

    1. Re:Other services work fine by flowsnake · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Indeed. I'm not giving up my SoCuteUrl; the links come out a bit longer, but oh so lovely! For example, who would not prefer http://www.socuteurl.com/coozzypumpkins over http://www.ExpertSexChange.com?

    2. Re:Other services work fine by vandit2k6 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Hahaha that's awesome, you should open a new string shortening service :)

      --
      Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
    3. Re:Other services work fine by Shikaku · · Score: 2, Insightful

      YRUNAHRY?

    4. Re:Other services work fine by s1id3r0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Although I can't disagree with your thesis, as I see the same trend, the question that I think we need to ask is how much of a concern it really is. I am far more concerned about Microsoft dominating the market in the same manner. I am happy to see Google put major pressure on Microsoft as they come out with and link multiple projects into a "one stop domain". Personally I support open software, and I am happy to see Google growing the open source model ever further with each new product or feature. I disagree with Google controlling so much of the market, but they do it so well that I can't really be as upset with them as their dominance may warrant. It is a convince to have all the tools coming from a company that you can count on. Google does so much that just the fact that they keep it all as together as they do is nothing short of a miracle in and of itself.

    5. Re:Other services work fine by at_slashdot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In a way is better to have one company I trust know all about my digital life than spread out that info to more companies.

      --
      "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
    6. Re:Other services work fine by ShakaUVM · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >>I, for one, will be avoiding this. Existing services work fine and this is one more way Google is headed towards info omniscience.

      If a friend emails a Google shortened URL to you, you'll avoid clicking on it?

      BUT HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT'S A RICKROLL OR GOATSE LINK?

      The not-knowing will drive you slowly insane.

  2. Why? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aside from twitter and SMS which both have self-imposed limits, what's the point of these things?!

    1. Re:Why? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Using a shortening service because Slashdot has crappy URLs doesn't fix the root of the problem.

      Yet it's entirely appropriate since he doesn't control Slashdot nor the myriad sites to which the solution can be generalized.

      Even if Slashdot added a 'short URL link' feature for people to read over the phone, most people wouldn't know how to find it - there's no standard mechanism to expose or relate such a thing.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re:Why? by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How else are you going to send people to goatse or a rickroll?

    3. Re:Why? by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They're a lot easier to read out over the phone, for one - especially if you're deep linking into a site.

      Why would I want to read a URL over the phone? If I'm communicating a URL to someone for deep linking into a site, then the one thing I can be pretty sure of (since, if I wasn't, I'd have no reason to communicate the URL) is that the person has internet access. Given that, there are a lot better ways of getting them the URL then reading it to them--such as email. Even if I want to use the telephone to notify them, I can just describe what it is, and tell them I'm mailing them the link.

  3. Wouldn't be necessary if... by Bill+Dimm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Websites wouldn't be tempted to use such long URLs if search engines would stop using the URL (other than the domain name) as a factor in ranking the search results. How many CMSs now stuff an entire article title into the URL purely for SEO purposes? Is that stuff in the URL really telling the search engine anything that can't be found in the <title> or <h1> tags?

    1. Re:Wouldn't be necessary if... by marcansoft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not just for SEO purposes. Stuffing the article title into the URL is also informative for those who read the URL. Of course, that belongs inside the tag linking to it, but few formats (besides plain HTML) support anchor text that differs from the link (especially all the text-based mediums that have had hyperlinking shoehorned in by using automatic linkification).

    2. Re:Wouldn't be necessary if... by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Long URLs also (should) let us know what's behind a link before we actually click on it.

      www.apple.com/ipod/
      www.microsoft.com/office/
      www.nintendo.com/wii/
      and so on...

      If you have garbage such as "&id=54353" in your non-search URLs, you're doing it wrong.

  4. Re:Is this really a problem? by unity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, I can't remember the last time I clicked on one of those "shortened" urls. I just skip over them. I prefer to know where I'm going.

  5. I hate all shorteners. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Call me old fashioned, but I like to see where a link is going before I click it.

  6. Re:More POV than news by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Timothy didn't say it, unless you're accusing him of putting words in eldavojohn's mouth - the quoted bit is (meant to be) written by the submitter, not the editor. Assuming he didn't change it, Timothy wrote "eldavojohn writes" and "Google's shortening service is called Goo.gl."

    And there *are* privacy concerns, Google is doing this to mine it for information, that's what they do. It's hardly the end of the world though - don't like it, don't use it.

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.