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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?"

3 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: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?