Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the we-can-do-that-too dept.

Anonymusing writes "Just what the world needs, another URL shortener, right? Google seems to think so, and it's making its own widely available to anyone — complete with tracking and statistics — for free. As noted on its blog: 'There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you're protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products.' Is bit.ly shaking in its boots?"

7 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. TinyURL by klui · · Score: 4, Informative

    I prefer TinyURL because it can give me a preview of the expanded URL.

    1. Re:TinyURL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I just hazarded a guess and appended a + to a goo.gl url (since that's the syntax bit.ly uses) and lo and behold, it took me to the info page for the url.

  2. Re:Keep working? by deinol · · Score: 3, Informative

    and it will keep working

    Like Wave, right?

    You realize that while they stopped development of further wave features, it is still available and functioning for anyone who wants to use it?

    --
    Got Apathy?
  3. Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Shikaku · · Score: 3, Informative

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/162021/

    This Firefox add-on (Their homepage http://long-shore.com/ has Opera and Chrome support as well) allowed me to hover the link and see that it was a Goatse link.

    Very useful.

  4. Re:Who? by YoshiDan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is bit.ly shaking in its boots?

    Dunno, I've never heard of them before. Should I have?

    Only if you're one of the freaks that uses twitter...

  5. In this day of drive by attacks... by Nyder · · Score: 3, Informative

    I find url shorteners to be dangerous. You don't know that it links to. And I find that everyone seems to use them, even the security "professionals" that it really makes no sense.

    While I understand how handy they are when you need to share a link with someone in voice or something. But I never click on them from articles or anything. I refuse.

    Imagine the Internet is a gun. URL Shorteners are the chambers. A bad link is the bullet.

    Now imagine that gun is pointed at your head, and everytime you click on a shortened URL, you are pulling the trigger.

    --
    Be seeing you...
  6. Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Informative
    The link (see the info below) was created on September 11th. I certainly had nothing to do with it, since goo.gl wasn't public at the time. In other words, somebody on the google dev team is responsible for the link. Kind of expected with a lame service like yaus (Yet Another Url Shortener).

    This also explains why, until I pointed it out (found by random testing of obvious word+number combos) a couple of hours ago, it only had 5 hits in all that time. It's since had almost 800 in the last 4 hours alone

    So blame some google tester - not me. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the system - and there are many. Don't shoot the messenger, mkay?