Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public

complete with tracking and statistics by Galestar · 2010-09-30 10:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

As in, one more place where Google gets to track you and make you a statistic.

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AccountKiller

Re:complete with tracking and statistics by LostCluster · 2010-09-30 10:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

You have a point... as the goo.gl site says "All goo.gl URLs and click analytics are public and can be shared by anyone."
Then again, it's the first URL shortening site that has a too-big-to-fail company behind it so we don't have to worry about a tr.im-like shutdown threat.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Galestar · 2010-09-30 10:43 · Score: 1

I'm thinking more of the tracking that they may do without releasing to the public. Or their ability to aggregate this data with their many other tracking/statistics pieces. They aren't doing this just to be nice ya'know!

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AccountKiller
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by sznupi · 2010-09-30 10:55 · Score: 1, Interesting

It still brakes the readability of URLs (yes, it's usually far from perfect anyway, but the domain at least tells something); well, I guess this one might be slightly less evil, also in the mentioned stats gathering, right?...
(or allowing one to see the target url, assuming you're logged into Google Account of course)

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One that hath name thou can not otter
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by larry+bagina · 2010-09-30 10:59 · Score: 1

google has killed of plenty of products from acquired companies. They've also killed of plenty of their own projects.

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Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by slash.dt · 2010-09-30 11:00 · Score: 1

Won't affect me - I never click on any shortened link. If I can't see if it goes to the site that I am intending to go to, I won't click it. Unfortunately lots of people do click on these links and then wonder why they get virus and malware. If google can make the links safer that would be good but I still plan to avoid them.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by pitchpipe · 2010-09-30 11:01 · Score: 4, Funny

Am I doing this right? http://goo.gl/

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Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by heypete · 2010-09-30 11:15 · Score: 1

And?
There's plenty of competitors who offer similar shortening services who also track users and generate statistics.
Personally, I think the tracking/statistics is kinda neat. For example, the link http://goo.gl/d2dh points to http://www.slashdot.org/, and the info page is available at http://goo.gl/info/d2dh -- I like the fact that they create a QR code for the shortened URL, which makes it easy to share with mobile users (no need to separately generate the code).
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by pitchpipe · 2010-09-30 11:24 · Score: 1

Wth? I tried it and all it did was lengthen the URL Read why it was discontinued. Getting the ability to track who is clicking on what must be worth a lot of money, because I'm sure that Google has done their homework.

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Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by nigelo · 2010-09-30 11:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

Please mod parent down - it's NSFW.

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*Still* negative function...
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by heypete · 2010-09-30 11:35 · Score: 1

Well, Google *does* have a substantial database of malicious sites, spammers, etc. that they already use in their SafeBrowsing API that browsers like Chrome and Firefox use.
Presumably they'd be able to block the vast majority of such sites and check at intervals to ensure that linked sites remain non-malicious.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by sznupi · 2010-09-30 11:36 · Score: 1

Well, there's a better one to tolerate: http://goo.gl/

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One that hath name thou can not otter
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by beakerMeep · 2010-09-30 11:44 · Score: 1

I clicked your link and it asked me to input "brainz"

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meep
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Shikaku · 2010-09-30 11:48 · 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.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 11:49 · Score: 5, Funny

The best one? try cr4p - it links to Facebook. Easy to remember, and pretty descriptive.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by beakerMeep · 2010-09-30 11:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's not just the tracking that's bad, it's all the problems that come with having an extra middle man and not being able to see what you are clicking. Certainly Google doesn't protect everyone from all malware that shows up in search results, there's no reason to think they can here (I think they do a good job considering, but malware is still hugely pervasive). It also breaks the move to a more semantic web. Just look at Slashdot's URL for this story and you can see what the story is about, what category it's in and when it was posted.
interesting blog post i read a few months back about some of the pitfalls
In my opinion URL shortening is bad for the web, and bad for usability. It's also something pretty easily created by any website on their own if they really need it.

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meep
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 12:00 · Score: 1, Interesting

This is actually rather clever. You get to build your bookmark collection, sort of, but with a twist that the statistics are shared.
Suppose there a N people who have many of your links collected. Can they be considered people like you? Can your searches
be refined with their statistics? Can you invite them as friends? Can you say social networking?
So the information could be quite valuable, provided people use it that way. If they don't, it'll still work as a standalone service.
But that's not all. They could eventually enhance the service to implement cached shortened pages, which would serve as a
basic wayback machine. Well, who knows. Point is they engage *real* people to provide feedback and a metric of worthiness.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by mattack2 · 2010-09-30 12:04 · Score: 1

brakes
http://goo.gl/3YQc
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by WCguru42 · 2010-09-30 12:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.
My unrivaled intellect allowed me to know that it was a Goatse link as the poster was trying to make a point and the link name was "gaping hole." Not sure why the Troll mod as his point is valid and anyone dumb enough to click a link with that text on it shouldn't be on the internet.

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"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by monkeySauce · 2010-09-30 12:33 · Score: 1

Speak for yourself, I work at a strip club!
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by NEW22 · 2010-09-30 13:03 · Score: 1

This is a typical comment. I don't really know what the point of it is though. Are you warning us as if we didn't know? Do you think Google should come up with services, but you find it distasteful for them to benefit or profit from them? Is it some sort of existential scream of "I'm not a number dammit! I'm a person!"? Do you believe this is part of a dark conspiracy that will end in some sort of dystopian future? Is it just snark against Mr. Popular: Google?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tulmad · 2010-09-30 13:34 · Score: 1

Not only that, but it links you to some cheesy Sorority Life application on Facebook.

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"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Jurily · 2010-09-30 13:34 · Score: 1

Can you invite them as friends? Can you say social networking?
Please don't give them ideas :(
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by PReDiToR · 2010-09-30 13:44 · Score: 1

http://apps.facebook.com/sororitylife/?ref_id=100000786219945&send_timestamp=1284219957&track=invite-giftReturn-5003-20100713-0&action=claimGift&from=100000786219945&target=5003&gift_hash=fa3ea8ea2361db9eafe7246117d522fc&gift_timestamp=1284219957000

Whoring!

I don't know what the prize is, but I'm not clicking!

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Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by HybridST · 2010-09-30 14:29 · Score: 5, Funny

I got a rock...

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Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by cheekyjohnson · 2010-09-30 14:59 · Score: 1

"virus and malware"
One should wonder what kind of shitty browser these people are using to get viruses by merely visiting a website.

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Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 15:03 · 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?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 15:09 · Score: 1

I have nothing to do with the creation of the url - it was created on September 11th, as you can see from the info. http://goo.gl/info/cr4p#week
In fact, until I found it 4 hours ago, it only had 5 hits. The other 800 are from my posts - and I only found it by trying some obvious combinations, like sh1t which gives a whale.
But the link title really says it all - Failbook is a security risk to begin with, and combining it with goo.gl is NOT a good idea. The only real reason for url shorteners is twitter and it's stupid 140-character limit.
Individual sites can offer their own url shorteners, and edit/monitor them to make sure that they make sense. Google claimed this would be safe and permanent - you obviously can't have both, as http://goo.gl/cr4p proves - even better than http://goo.gl/lLIm
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Archangel+Michael · 2010-09-30 15:58 · Score: 1

I actually can't remember any of the "short urls" that go to sites that I like. URL shortening does nothing to help me remember where the heck that site was. URL shortening is just a lazy man's href that does nothing to help people find a useful site again.
And it tells you nothing about what you're about to click. When I see the obfuscated but short URL, all I can think of is "hear comes Goatsex" or was it tubgirl? Two girls and a cup?
No thanks.

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Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by pknoll · 2010-09-30 16:22 · Score: 1

There's a similar extension for Safari, which does a number of other useful things: Ultimate Status Bar.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by kainosnous · 2010-09-30 16:53 · Score: 1

I completely agree. It's the fact that I don't know what I'm clicking that is the most concern for me. I don't think that I've ever knowingly clicked on a shortened URL for that reason.
I guess that I could understand why people who use twitter or other SMS technologies might want a shortened URL, but as you already mentioned, any site can do that for themself if they want. I don't think that anybody has a 140+ char domain name in use.

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There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by smbarbour · 2010-09-30 18:03 · Score: 1

Or in other words, according to Google, the craphole is the combination of Facebook and Twitter.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by oljanx · 2010-09-30 18:21 · Score: 1

I'd like to see a URL shortening service that doesn't automatically redirect you, but rather displays a page with the destination URL, which you can then review before clicking. I'm sure there are such sites, but I've never seen one. My guess is that the extra step involved prevents them from being widely adopted.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by xouumalperxe · 2010-09-30 22:29 · Score: 1

As surprising as it may sound to you, there are pretty good use cases for shorteners. I use them plenty in IRC (in a work context), where posting long links with loads of parameters generates loads of visual spam, but I'd still rather post the link publicly. Since everybody knows who the regulars are, there is a fairly high degree of trust involved so the odds of getting some tubgirl or malware are pretty slim.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by gizmod · 2010-09-30 22:56 · Score: 1

Agreed. My manager sits right fucking behind me. Fastest I've EVER closed a window.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by LordSnooty · 2010-09-30 23:13 · Score: 1

Surely the attraction is the deep analysis such services offer. Like I can set up a short link, post it on a forum and watch how many people click, and where they click it, did it get tweeted and so on. If you don't own the URL's target server you'll never find this out.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by e70838 · 2010-09-30 23:21 · Score: 1

Long links with loads of parameters are a bad practice that should be avoided by good site coding conventions.
shorteners are a bad practice and can not be justified by an other bad practice.
If you do not like Long links with loads of parameters, you will avoid them and use cleaner sites. This is natural selection. If you use shorteners, the natural selection does not work anymore.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by olrad · 2010-09-30 23:40 · Score: 1

Incidentally http://goo.gl/sh1t is also a vaild link...
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tj111 · 2010-10-01 02:36 · Score: 1

True, but I really do enjoy Google's shortening service in Maps. Let's be honest, those old links were ridiculously long and contained no relevant information, shortening them up makes them easier to share any way you want (text, im, email, etc). For the majority of cases, url shortening isn't a good practice, but it's not universally bad either.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by GameboyRMH · 2010-10-01 02:42 · Score: 1

With tinyurl, you can save yourself from being goatse'd by changing the URL to preview.tinyurl.com/whatever. This way you can see where the link will take you before you go there.
And I'm trying to cut down my use of Google services so I won't be using their URL shortener when there are other ones available (like good ol' tinyurl). I also think URL shortening services in general should only be used where absolutely necessary, like twitter posts, or chat rooms where 5-line long Amazon URLs aren't acceptable.

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by qoncept · 2010-10-01 02:56 · Score: 1

Just look at Slashdot's URL for this story and you can see what the story is about
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/09/30/2054210
Say what?

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Whale
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by UUDIBUUDI · 2010-10-01 05:33 · Score: 1

How about having the IRC application shorten the visible text and have them pop up the entire URL on request (i.e. onMouseOver)? Then the shortening service becomes more redundant, which is (as I see it) good for everyone.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by xouumalperxe · 2010-10-01 05:36 · Score: 1

Great, you just solved the problem for one particular client of one particular protocol by having the client shorten urls, rather than solving the problem for everyone by making sure the url is small in the first place.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by xouumalperxe · 2010-10-01 05:41 · Score: 1

Long links with loads of parameters are a bad practice that should be avoided by good site coding conventions.
Provide me an alternative that allows me to share with someone else the exact state I saw a webpage in, and I'll buy into your theory.
Even accepting it's a bad practice, until the upstream vendor fixes the issue, we have to cope with it. And sure, url shortening is a bandaid, but when you're bleeding a bandaid is better than complaining you shouldn't have been cut to begin with.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by UUDIBUUDI · 2010-10-01 06:26 · Score: 1

Yup, and it works for other protocols and clients, too! Guess we're onto something here ;)
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Unequivocal · 2010-10-01 07:22 · Score: 1

My url says: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/30/2054210/Google-URL-Shortener-Opened-To-the-Public
Wonder why different peeps get different url's to this story?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by Clifton+Beach · 2010-10-01 17:53 · Score: 1

So what's Google got against Whales in Australia then?

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42 hidden comments
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by ArsenneLupin · 2010-10-01 21:20 · Score: 1

Just remember, its "mill" spelled backwards and the two middle letters upper-cased.
How awfully complicated... I prefer to just remember beef, spelled normally, all lower case.
Remember: if you want a goat, ask for a beef!
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-10-02 04:32 · Score: 1
NICE! Five questions:
1. How many times did you submit that before you got it right?
2. Obviously google only censors certain words from their list of banned short url expressions. How long before we see 0xDEADBEEF and 0xCAFEBABE?
3. Is there censored list i18n-compatible?
4. Can we get spam? sp4m? Any other variant?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by ArsenneLupin · 2010-10-02 04:51 · Score: 1

How many times did you submit that before you got it right?
About 2500 times... No, I didn't submit those manually, but instead used this

Obviously google only censors certain words from their list of banned short url expressions. How long before we see 0xDEADBEEF and 0xCAFEBABE?
hehe... but it'll take a while until the 4 letter character space is full, never mind reaching 8 letters...

Can we get spam? sp4m? Any other variant?
... is not in yet... But I'll keep you posted once it (or variants...) show up...
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-10-02 06:52 · Score: 1

It would take a decent botnet. My calculations show that a million bots doing 10 simultaneous requests a second would take 8 months to use up all the 62-char combos between 1 and 8 digits.
On the other hand, a Mariposa-style botnet could do it in under 11 days. Imagine "owning" all the links an being able to change where the server redirects each one ...
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by ArsenneLupin · 2010-10-02 07:04 · Score: 1

My calculations show that a million bots doing 10 simultaneous requests a second would take 8 months to use up all the 62-char combos between 1 and 8 digits.
Not to mention that after a while, google blacklists your IP for a while. So it's more like 126 requests per 2 or 3 hours per IP (or whatever time it takes for the block to expire).
No, for 8 digits, exhausting the space is not feasible. For 4 digits, on the other hand...

Imagine "owning" all the links an being able to change where the server redirects each one ...
Once submitted, you can't change it, unfortunately. Just imagine the fun that would be. Post a serious goo.gl link to a forum, wait until it gets duplicated onto a couple of other places, and after a few days, suddenly the beef becomes a goat...
Re:complete with tracking and statistics by tomhudson · 2010-10-02 08:47 · Score: 1
Once submitted, you can't change it, unfortunately

Absolutely not true. If you have control over the file it points to (for example, it points to http://example.com/news/20101001_lindsey_lohan_hooks_up_with_brad_pitt.php), you can replace the contents of that file with <?php header(location:http://goatse.fr);
You can even make it so that it does it at random times, or only when the user agent isn't googlebot.
So, the steps are:
1. create your file on server under your control that points to, say, a Failbook group
2. create shortened url
3. get people to use it
4. a month later change contents of your file to redirect to whatever you want.
5. blame google.

Who? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 10:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is bit.ly shaking in its boots?

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

Re:Who? by YoshiDan · 2010-09-30 12:36 · 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...
Re:Who? by jazzbassrob · 2010-10-01 01:53 · Score: 1

You can check out their website - Here, I've conveniently shortened the URL for you: goo.gl/alkw.
Re:Who? by theaceoffire · 2010-10-01 06:24 · Score: 1

I like them though. You can prefix any url with "bit.ly/" and get a valid shortened url. Handy, easy to remember.

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I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.

Chop off two letters by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 10:37 · Score: 5, Funny

g.gl, get to it google engineers. Short as hell.

Re:Chop off two letters by AnonymousClown · 2010-09-30 10:46 · Score: 1

A quick way to check what a domain is to type in "www."domain letters like www.ca to see Canada's. But instead of Greenland's (Had to go to Wiki for that) I got this and it's a login for a point of sale system.
Greenland is up for sale?

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RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Re:Chop off two letters by hawaiian717 · 2010-09-30 12:17 · Score: 1

Nope. I usually use j.mp, which is bit.ly's lesser-known, two-characters-shorter version. But for even shorter, there's to.

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End of Line.
Re:Chop off two letters by c6gunner · 2010-09-30 15:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

Can't. GL domain registration requires at least 3 letters.
Also, their domains apparently cost $95 per year, which seems a little steep.
Re:Chop off two letters by quenda · 2010-09-30 16:29 · Score: 1

Greenland is up for sale?
No, but you are not the first person to confuse it with Iceland.

Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 10:37 · Score: 1, Troll

http://goo.gl/lLIm

Works like a charm!

First goatse.fr goo.gl post!

Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by LostCluster · 2010-09-30 10:42 · Score: 1

Let's put the Google Instant censorship team on this one quick...
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by Idiomatick · 2010-09-30 10:43 · Score: 1

Considering that protecting people from this is supposedly the advantage wth. Also, possibly the only time someone has a chance at +5 informative for posting goatse.
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 10:56 · Score: 1

I was hoping for the elusive +5 Troll, rarer than a Sasquatch, Nessie, or a lawyer or politician with his hands in his own pockets :-)
The great thing is that, unlike most shortened urls, this one is fairly easy to remember. "mill" spelled backwards, with the middle two letters upper-case.

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.

I'm not so sure about the "quality" part :-)
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by LordLimecat · 2010-09-30 11:18 · Score: 1

Enter key is hard bro.
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by Shikaku · 2010-09-30 11:50 · Score: 1

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1804806&cid=33754434
There is, and I already posted a comment on it.
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by YoshiDan · 2010-09-30 12:14 · Score: 1

Like this? Click me I'm an innocent google link
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 18:51 · Score: 1

Also, possibly the only time someone has a chance at +5 informative for posting goatse.
Nope. Not the only time, and not the first one either
Linked comment has a certain age already, http://www.hick.org/goat used to be an alias for goatse but unfortunately no longer works. But you can still recognize the giver.jpg and hello.jpg suffixes.
Re:Get your shortened goat guy while it's fresh! by Idiomatick · 2010-09-30 23:48 · Score: 1

TY. Really I should just assume that all my ideas are already done. (wow, I think I got modded redundant for a post I made 29minutes before yours)

Unique feature by RichardDeVries · 2010-09-30 10:39 · Score: 3, Funny

goo.gl shortens goo.gl url's as well! No, I will not write an evil script. Someone has to do the 'No Evil', right?

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Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.

Re:Unique feature by pitchpipe · 2010-09-30 11:11 · Score: 1

goo.gl shortens goo.gl url's as well! No, I will not write an evil script. Someone has to do the 'No Evil', right?
I certainly wouldn't click on goo.gurl ! Or would I?!

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Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Re:Unique feature by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 21:50 · Score: 1

goo.gl shortens goo.gl url's as well! No, I will not write an evil script. Someone has to do the 'No Evil', right?
... and you'd hit browser redirect limits real fast. However, goo.gl shortens URL with different # suffixes (ignored by the web server) to different short urls. And pastebin has a script

Testing the goo.gl by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 10:40 · Score: 1, Funny

As a test I created a link to this slashdot article. I will post the statistics after a day. http://goo.gl/Kjyl

Re:Testing the goo.gl by Galestar · 2010-09-30 10:47 · Score: 1

Warning: the above link points to a youtube URL I have not visited it myself (as I'm at work), but I'm guessing it is most likely a Rick Roll.

-- Saving people from Rick Rolls since 2006

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AccountKiller
Re:Testing the goo.gl by E+IS+mC(Square) · 2010-09-30 10:49 · Score: 2, Informative

As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week
Re:Testing the goo.gl by RobertB-DC · 2010-09-30 10:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week
I'm sure it'll change over time, but the stats from the first 24 visitors from Slashdot are quite interesting:
Browsers
Firefox: 10
Chrome: 7
Mobile: 2
Opera: 2
Safari: 2
Arora: 1
This tells me that Slashdot users don't use IE. At least, not those who read brand-new stories and are willing to click an unknown link and chancing NSFW content. Thankfully, it's SFW, unless your boss was already "gonna give you up".
I'll be curious how those stats hold up tomorrow!

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Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Re:Testing the goo.gl by mirix · 2010-09-30 11:00 · Score: 1

A quarter of the machines are nix too. Year of linux on the desktop! ;-)
or year of admins reading slashdot on the server?

Platforms
Windows 22
Other Unix 10
Macintosh 5
iPod 2
iPhone 1

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Sent from my PDP-11
Re:Testing the goo.gl by DaleSwanson · 2010-09-30 12:48 · Score: 1

Above in several spots someone posted the same goatse shortened link. It appears to be the most clicked goo.gl link from this page. Currently it has 403 clicks compared to rickroll's 103. 254 are from slashdot domains.
http://goo.gl/info/lLIm#week -link to stats page, not redirected to goatse.
Firefox 172 43%
Chrome 79 20%
IE 3 1%

Also 89 are "other Unix" which is 22%. Not clear what that is though, as there are other dedicated categories for Linux and Mac. I would guess it is Linux though, as coming from slashdot I'd expect the Linux count to be higher than 3.
Re:Testing the goo.gl by MichaelSmith · 2010-09-30 13:03 · Score: 1

At least, not those who read brand-new stories and are willing to click an unknown link and chancing NSFW content
Also a lot of people who browse slash from work have to use IE, so they have two reasons not to risk NSFW content.

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http://michaelsmith.id.au
Re:Testing the goo.gl by c6gunner · 2010-09-30 15:38 · Score: 1

Doesn't seem to be changing much. As of now, only 3 out of 148 clicks have been from IE. I guess 3 AC's must have clicked the link :)
Re:Testing the goo.gl by neminem · 2010-10-01 08:31 · Score: 1

"Also a lot of people who browse slash from work have to use IE" I'm pretty sure slash is by definition NSFW. So *why* would people be browsing it from work, and why would it matter whether they were doing it with IE? Anyway, yeah, I was fairly amused that of the several random links claiming to be interesting in this thread, the *vast* majority of them were actually goatse. Thankfully, my work's web filter did something useful for once and blocked them all.

Do not want by Yvan256 · 2010-09-30 10:42 · Score: 1, Funny

The last thing the world need is yet another semisolid fat for food preparation.

Wait, what's the subject again?

Shortfight! by RobertB-DC · 2010-09-30 10:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've always preferred SoCuteURL. It makes URL's that are sometimes short, sometimes long, but always a lot easier to retype (say, from a text message) than a computer-generated hash. For example, I've got a better chance of telling someone how to type in socuteurl.com/yappypupperpig (so cute u r l dot com slash yappy pupper pig) than I do goo.gl slash anything.

Of course, I also have a soft spot in my heart for http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/ -- but they refuse to "shorten" http://goo.gl/ for me, saying "This URL has been rejected to prevent the universe from collapsing on itself."

--
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.

Re:Shortfight! by Nerdfest · 2010-09-30 10:57 · Score: 1

I'd like if people just shortened them on sites while still keeping them as meaningful as possible. It's a fine like to walk though.
Re:Shortfight! by hedwards · 2010-09-30 13:07 · Score: 1

Part of the problem is that people started storing huge amounts of crap in the URL for a dynamically created page. URLs weren't really ever intended for that sort of misuse, at least not in olden times. Result you get these ridiculously long URLs which are tough to deal with and easy to goatse people with.
Re:Shortfight! by socsoc · 2010-09-30 13:31 · Score: 1

There's been some attempts at this. Like link rel="shorturl" href="example.org/1234"
Nobody's really taken advantage of the sites that have implemented it though.
Re:Shortfight! by whoop · 2010-09-30 14:21 · Score: 1

And Goo.gl is happy to shorten itself to no end.

tr.im was the best by XxtraLarGe · 2010-09-30 10:54 · Score: 1

tr.im was a great URL shortener, too bad they aren't open for business any more. Not only that but tr.im is a much more descriptive name than bit.ly as far as what it does.

--
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.

Re:tr.im was the best by Nerdfest · 2010-09-30 10:58 · Score: 1

"Descriptive" and "URL shortener" don't really fit together well.

goo.gl/page by slshwtw · 2010-09-30 10:54 · Score: 1

easter egg? coincidence? conspiracy? goo.gl/page appears to redirect to a (barely) german-language page for a chrome extension that uses the goo.gl service. I wonder what other URL codes may have already been "reserved" (maybe they will have "premium" redirects like other shorteners have implemented)

Re:goo.gl/page by flimflammer · 2010-09-30 14:59 · Score: 1

There's a few of them.
I tried goo.gl/rick and got someone's facebook page.
Re:goo.gl/page by ArsenneLupin · 2010-10-01 00:39 · Score: 1, Funny

I tried http://goo.gl/zmsm , and got someone's MSN mail box. Weird.

Keep working? by Leebert · 2010-09-30 10:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

and it will keep working

Like Wave, right?

Re:Keep working? by deinol · 2010-09-30 11:09 · 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?
Re:Keep working? by bill_mcgonigle · 2010-09-30 11:14 · Score: 1

You realize that while they stopped development of further wave features, it is still available and functioning for anyone who wants to use it?
So, how long will that last?
Actually, I think I finally saw a use case for Wave the other night. There was an earthquake here (rare in NH) and a WTF-fest broke out on 3 or 4 of the first Facebook comments in my social network, several referencing Twitter searches.
I *think* this is what Wave is for. I'm still not sure, though.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Re:Keep working? by game+kid · 2010-09-30 11:25 · Score: 1

Once Google decides Wave is dragging themselves down, it will optionally disappear, just like old YouTube profiles and Blogger FTP.

--
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Re:Keep working? by RocketRabbit · 2010-09-30 11:46 · Score: 1

Quit posting to /. anonymously, Mr. Brin. Jeez.
Re:Keep working? by Wayne247 · 2010-09-30 13:49 · Score: 1

I know it was mostly for the humor (and it was funny), but Wave is a project that never left "alpha", must less ever came close to "beta". Goo.gl, on the other hand, is official, live, and supported. When they say it'll stay, I'm pretty sure they mean it.

Great. Another way to get rick-rolled... by Pezbian · 2010-09-30 11:01 · Score: 1

Never gonna give you up... without compensation.

--
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.

FOR FREE OMG by Punto · 2010-09-30 11:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

this reminds me of the old "subscribe to my free newsletter". who the hell pays for an URL shortener in the first place?

--

--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!

Re:FOR FREE OMG by ceoyoyo · 2010-09-30 12:56 · Score: 1

You do, of course. Google (or whoever) gets to know where you're going and what you're looking at. Same as all Google's other free services - ads and tracking.
Now, the question is, does being default search engine on Android justify it's cost? Particularly when you'd probably be default search engine anyway? Or is Google going to have to do something evil?

TinyURL by klui · 2010-09-30 11:03 · Score: 4, Informative

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

Re:TinyURL by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 11:52 · 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.
Re:TinyURL by randomsearch · 2010-10-01 00:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

http://goo.gl/cr4p+
The power of slashdot.
RS

Re:Too bad for case-sentive by dr.+greenthumb · 2010-09-30 11:09 · Score: 2, Informative

It's about keyspace.

Given 4 bytes of [a-zA-Z0-9] gives you 14,776,336 possible combinations while [a-z0-9] only gives you a mere 1,679,616 possible combinations.
Assuming they'll eventually up the number of bytes up to six (ie. 4 to 6 bytes), you'll get 57,731,144,752 combinations case sensitive compared to just 2,238,928,128 case insensitive.

the good shortened URLs are already gone by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-30 11:09 · Score: 2, Funny

I wrote a script that would keep re-submitting my URL until I ended up with goo.gl/R2D2, but found out it was already used. I think I'll make a mosaic of the 23,864 QR barcodes on the side of a building somewhere as a social commentary.

Security check while generating shortened link? by blackgod · 2010-09-30 11:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Google chrome provides security warning while trying to navigate to suspicious site. Will this be available while generating/clicking shortened link from any browser - I mean independent of browser capability and settings?

--
bits and bytes of life should serve the needy - My bits and bytes

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by Hope+Thelps · 2010-09-30 11:33 · Score: 1

How about this, not tubgirl but it is w1Kd :

http://goo.gl/w1Kd

--
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 11:43 · Score: 3, Funny

Congrats. Your work?

It would be interesting to test all the 4-letter/number combos and see what the distribution of content is. A simple test with a common 4-letter word shows that they're censoring words from the url shortening pool.

BTW cr4p brings you to facebook - how appropriate.

Or not... by tomaasz · 2010-09-30 11:43 · Score: 1

The interesting thing is that goo.gl gets "shortened" to goo.gl/zoan.

Re:Or not... by c6gunner · 2010-09-30 15:56 · Score: 1

It gets shortened to any number of other things; they don't seem to keep track of sites that are already in the database, and instead assign a new URL each time. It even shortens it's own shortened links. I got bored and made a chain of them - if you click here it will take you through 10 redirects before finally getting to goo.gl.

Wordpress Mod by Mike+Zahalan · 2010-09-30 11:55 · Score: 1

I think it would be pretty cool if somebody would write a mod for wordpress that can automatically convert links you share in your posts to goo.gl urls... that could make the stats analysis easier. Also, it would be pretty sweet if the link had a hover tag that showed the original url to dispel visitors skepticism.

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by Hope+Thelps · 2010-09-30 11:56 · Score: 1

It was just a url I grabbed off Youtube for a test of goo.gl and was amused by the short url it gave me.

I think your cr4p link is destined to become famous.

--
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2

World of Goo Greenland by JimWise · 2010-09-30 11:57 · Score: 1

By hijacking a foreign country's TLD Google has messed up World Of Goo's plans on getting goo.gl for their Greenland offices.

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 12:04 · Score: 1

I think your cr4p link is destined to become famous.

I wish I could take credit for it. That's the sort of thing that "just works", and you KNOW it's going to make the rounds.

Mother Nature might be a B*tch, but she also has a sense of humour.

shadyurl by tomz16 · 2010-09-30 12:10 · Score: 1

Still not as good as shadyurl :

http://5z8.info/bomb-plans_p7p8n_stalin

Re:shadyurl by Xtifr · 2010-09-30 14:07 · Score: 1

Darn, you beat me to it. Definitely one of the best! :)
Here's slashdot: http://5z8.info/gain-inches_d1p0h_launchexe

Love how it's broken right now by Godskitchen · 2010-09-30 12:20 · Score: 1

"...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."

404: Page not found – the page http://goo.gl/action/shorten does not exist.

If you typed in or copied/pasted this URL, make sure you included all the characters, with no extra punctuation.

Re:Love how it's broken right now by Godskitchen · 2010-10-01 06:49 · Score: 1

I entered a link to shorten and clicked OK and it displayed that.

heh by Godskitchen · 2010-09-30 12:22 · Score: 1

"...every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast..."

Apparently their legions of PhDs can't figure out how to use adverbs properly.

Re:heh by Concerned+Onlooker · 2010-09-30 14:28 · Score: 1

It will work fastly?

--
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Re:heh by Godskitchen · 2010-09-30 14:43 · Score: 1

quickly
Re:heh by Godskitchen · 2010-09-30 14:44 · Score: 1

Ok, so apparently "fast" is an adverb. It just sounds awkward to me.

Re:bit.ly? by Matt+Perry · 2010-09-30 12:24 · Score: 1

you know what Twitter is, right?

No, although I've started to see them mentioned all the time in the last six months or so. I assume they are another Facebook-type site but I don't care enough to find out.

--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.

Find All the URL Shorteners by handy_vandal · 2010-09-30 12:27 · Score: 1

Someone please tell Professor X to "Find all the URL shorteners, and destroy them."

--
-kgj

I Am Not a Number by handy_vandal · 2010-09-30 12:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

I am not a number!

I am the aggregate of a huge array of numbers!

--
-kgj

No preview? by houghi · 2010-09-30 12:46 · Score: 2, Informative

At least with TinyURL you can enable preview :http://tinyurl.com/preview.php
You can also link to the preview, so people won't be fired or offended by NSFW stuff.

I have placed the following in mu bashrc, so I can check others as well:
check(){ curl -sI $1 | sed -n 's/Location:.* //p';}

Not everybody will be able to do that.

--
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.

Re:No preview? by boarder8925 · 2010-09-30 17:44 · Score: 1

Append a plus sign to the URL, and you'll be taken to the shortened URL's info page. E.g., http://goo.gl/b1dv+.

--
Keep your eyes to the sky.

Too big to fail? by apparently · 2010-09-30 12:51 · Score: 1

Unless you're of the opinion that if google were to go bankrupt, it would take the US economy down with it, I don't think that expression means what you think it means.

Re:Too big to fail? by dakameleon · 2010-09-30 14:57 · Score: 1

It'd be interesting to imagine that scenario in a what-if-google-turned-off-tomorrow instead of a google-declines-and-is-replaced-by-others scenario that is more likely.
Google switches off tomorrow: what would the result be?
No more GMail, no more Google Maps, no more Google Ads, no more YouTube, no more Google Apps, no more Google DNS.
Anyone want to pitch in with the likely impact of these things?

--
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Re:Too big to fail? by QuantumBeep · 2010-09-30 14:59 · Score: 1

Many people would be very unhappy with the loss of these products. Our personal lives would not be affected in any real way besides maybe having to change an email address.
Corporate users may have to undertake expensive migrations.
Re:Too big to fail? by LostCluster · 2010-09-30 15:36 · Score: 1

Google's Ad business is critical to the American and world economy. Billions change hands every day based on users who are connected to businesses by the Google Ad Network, not just on the search engine but thousands of content sites. If it were to vaporize, there's nothing that would be able to fill the void fast enough.
Re:Too big to fail? by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 21:40 · Score: 1

Google switches off tomorrow: what would the result be?
No more GMail, no more Google Maps, no more Google Ads, no more YouTube,

Increased productivity?
Re:Too big to fail? by tehcyder · 2010-09-30 23:58 · Score: 1

Google's Ad business is critical to the American and world economy. Billions change hands every day based on users who are connected to businesses by the Google Ad Network, not just on the search engine but thousands of content sites. If it were to vaporize, there's nothing that would be able to fill the void fast enough.

What utter bollocks, the majority of business is not dependent on the internet, and the part that is does not rely just on google to get customers.

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it

McAfee by socsoc · 2010-09-30 12:54 · Score: 1

McAfee has one too... http://mcaf.ee/ Not that I would trust them any more than the other url shorteners, but they claim to protect against malware too. Heck, any website administrator who is bored can set one up on their existing domain without a cute URL.

Re:McAfee by Reaperducer · 2010-09-30 13:45 · Score: 1

Already done. I don't trust outside URL shorteners, and my URL is already short enough, so
http://www.towrs.com/article/96/The-John-Hancock-Center-Chicago
includes a clip-box with the shortened URL
http://towrs.com/Z96

--
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by MichaelSmith · 2010-09-30 12:54 · Score: 1

Makes me wonder if somebody has been playing...

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au

Re:bit.ly? by socsoc · 2010-09-30 12:57 · Score: 1

You are reading Slashdot and really have no idea what Twitter is? Even if you are against Twitter, or social media in general, no need to be elitist about it. I don't use it, but obviously other people do.

Still less reliable than a real URL by noidentity · 2010-09-30 13:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

It's still less reliable than a URL to the actual page, and can still be used to trick people into visiting sites they would not want to visit if they knew the URL. And remember, these shorteners should only be used when a short URL is needed. Anywhere you can embed a link, it doesn't matter if it's ridiculously long. Only where the URL itself must be included as plain text does its length even possibly matter.

Re:bit.ly? by hedwards · 2010-09-30 13:03 · Score: 1

Twitter, isn't that what twits twatter on about?

blah by bob0the0mighty · 2010-09-30 13:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

http://goo.gl/SEJS http://goo.gl/GpGu http://goo.gl/C5a8

bit.ly is still better because... by Bourdain · 2010-09-30 13:45 · Score: 1

...it has link customization, i.e. with bit.ly, it will assign me a link but then I can change it to something like "Bourdain1" which is easier to read off the phone and type in then some random, albeit short, alphanumeric characters

I call a bit of bullshit, if you please. by nimbius · 2010-09-30 14:00 · Score: 1

the url shortener will work as well as their app engine site works, that is to say after a while people will realize its just another vector for spam and malware and begin adding it web filters and email filters at carrier gateways. Working for a rather large email service provider, i can assure you after a month chances are very good ill have the entire subnet theyre peddling this from on my various scanning clusters collective shitlists.

--
Good people go to bed earlier.

In this day of drive by attacks... by Nyder · 2010-09-30 14:32 · 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...

Re:In this day of drive by attacks... by Yosho · 2010-10-01 04:02 · Score: 1

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.
Imagine that analogies are a gun. Words are the chambers. False logic is the bullet.
Now imagine that gun is pointed at your head, and every time you say something, a koala bear climbs down a rainbow to give you a necklace made of flower petals.
I don't really know where this is going, just that it never made sense in the first place.

--
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)

Ahh, but does it protect you from. . . by JSBiff · 2010-09-30 14:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

goatse, tubgirl, etc?

I can't imagine they could possibly protect you from every possible. . . undesirable thing that someone might create a shortened link to.

Re:Ahh, but does it protect you from. . . by umundane · 2010-09-30 15:48 · Score: 1

I randomly typed goo.gl/flab and got a surprise. NSFW, unless men with erect penises are work-safe.
Re:Ahh, but does it protect you from. . . by vlm · 2010-09-30 23:42 · Score: 1

Lynx is the proper protection tool for that problem. Doesn't rely on url shorteners either.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:Ahh, but does it protect you from. . . by ArsenneLupin · 2010-10-01 01:09 · Score: 1

flab.... hehe... poor choice of acronym for this picture...

Re:goo.gl/link by symbolset · 2010-09-30 14:59 · Score: 1

Is a document where Brazil establishes an embassy in Tuvalu. Hm. Gotta be a Godwin in there somewhere.

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.

Dot.tk by cheekyjohnson · 2010-09-30 15:13 · Score: 1

Dot.tk is still the best URL shortener for me. At least with that you can make a URL that appears to link to an actual website as opposed to unreadable garbage.

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Filthy, filthy copyrapists!

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by tomhudson · 2010-09-30 15:17 · Score: 1

Wow - it works! http://goo.gl/info/btch#week

created April 13th, 2010 - and only 2 clicks. One of them was mine, and the other one was ...?

Long URL: www.facebook.com/pages/I-Support-Death-by-Sandwich/114394155245805?v=wall

I guess a lot of the testers use Failbook.

Re:Too bad for case-sentive by Archangel+Michael · 2010-09-30 16:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

But, if you're really clever, you can do something like four sets of octets to tell people, it is about as intuitive as URL shorteners.

--
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.

Leave it to Google to throw shareholder money away by scottbomb · 2010-09-30 16:44 · Score: 1

Lessee... they tried making a browser, an OS, a VOIP app, an office suite... all duds. They bought YouTube and now they're ruining it by putting ads on top of people's videos. Everything Google touches turns to s&#t except, of course, for search. Maybe they should stick with what they do right. I'm sure the shareholders would appreciate the savings in the form of dividends.

What's the difference? by Joce640k · 2010-09-30 16:47 · Score: 1

All those others are tracking you and making you a statistic except you don't know what evil companies they sell the info to.

--
No sig today...

Re:Leave it to Google to throw shareholder money a by Anonymous+Psychopath · 2010-09-30 18:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

Lessee... they tried making a browser, an OS, a VOIP app, an office suite... all duds. They bought YouTube and now they're ruining it by putting ads on top of people's videos. Everything Google touches turns to s&#t except, of course, for search.

Maybe they should stick with what they do right. I'm sure the shareholders would appreciate the savings in the form of dividends.

Without commenting on your interesting and unusual interpretation of the word "duds", I do think you should have had a look at their stock performance before saying silly things about shareholder value and dividends.

--

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 18:44 · Score: 1

You're welcome

Re:goo.gl/jAs3 by gregrah · 2010-09-30 19:16 · Score: 1

Damn you.

Case Sensitive? by ashraya · 2010-09-30 20:07 · Score: 1

Hi,

Am I the only one concerned that this seems to be case sensitive? I definitely dont want to give out Case Sensitive shortened URLs - Seems wrong fundamentally.

Enlighten me...

Gani

As if.. by RichiH · 2010-09-30 20:36 · Score: 1

Google Wave is functioning _as of right now_. What about in two years?

The cancelled the "any URL to RSS" feature in Google Reader yesterday. I was told about this... yesterday. Yay for giving me time to set up a different system!

Re:Facebook by TaoPhoenix · 2010-09-30 21:14 · Score: 1

"BTW cr4p brings you to facebook - how appropriate."

So does http://goo.gl/tOmH

--
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine

Re:Too bad for case-sentive by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 21:20 · Score: 1

It's about keyspace.

So, let's exhaust that keyspace with appropriate content...:
http://goo.gl/E3BD http://goo.gl/ACYe http://goo.gl/ukhd http://goo.gl/tyw0 http://goo.gl/oLTR http://goo.gl/xIf6 http://goo.gl/CQIM http://goo.gl/Mly8 http://goo.gl/X7Cy http://goo.gl/W6PW http://goo.gl/rD8L http://goo.gl/0LUu http://goo.gl/Kfgn http://goo.gl/cXYp http://goo.gl/GVBV http://goo.gl/fmXf http://goo.gl/bAz3 http://goo.gl/t5hH http://goo.gl/4EaT http://goo.gl/BAnE http://goo.gl/F5FS http://goo.gl/XpaX http://goo.gl/LCoL http://goo.gl/Tej0 http://goo.gl/zmsm http://goo.gl/oP2o http://goo.gl/hqdl http://goo.gl/sRV5 http://goo.gl/Zsmo http://goo.gl/j5JY http://goo.gl/IK1W http://goo.gl/RJ2C http://goo.gl/9WB3 http://goo.gl/aPA5 http://goo.gl/D9Lx http://goo.gl/YBXh http://goo.gl/qMxO http://goo.gl/I50p http://goo.gl/C1bP http://goo.gl/yICj http://goo.gl/98es http://goo.gl/MCZh http://goo.gl/3Cus http://goo.gl/rbba http://goo.gl/cIsr http://goo.gl/WQJM http://goo.gl/rajx http://goo.gl/va8L http://goo.gl/fzYH http://goo.gl/Brdu http://goo.gl/QuVy http://goo.gl/RjVc http://goo.gl/F3X0 http://goo.gl/S5B8 http://goo.gl/7KXs http://goo.gl/07D3 http://goo.gl/qIlP http://goo.gl/DD9g http://goo.gl/vWfC http://goo.gl/hbhN http://goo.gl/ZAiZ http://goo.gl/mRt4 http://goo.gl/JUph http://goo.gl/3VYA http://goo.gl/sD2c http://goo.gl/j706 http://goo.gl/OitN http://goo.gl/C87Y http://goo.gl/pAmW http://goo.gl/MAPI http://goo.gl/UxwD http://goo.gl/PGwc http://goo.gl/2YNz http://goo.gl/Tm9E http://goo.gl/SMHG http://goo.gl/WP2W

Re:Too bad for case-sentive by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 21:30 · Score: 1

And if you want to join in on the fun: http://pastebin.com/KMRAKgp0.

Run it. Wait a while. Run it again. Wait a while. Run it again. Change IP. Run it again...

Suggestion to Google by zero0ne · 2010-09-30 22:30 · Score: 1

On the stat pages, you should be able to click on the referrer and then the chart and the visitor profile data should dynamically update to only showing you stats for that referrer. Ditto if you click on a specific field in the visitor profile as well. We all know they have the data, so just let us see it with some simple scripting.

Why? by jopet · 2010-09-30 22:43 · Score: 1

I really can't see any fundamental wrongness in that, but I can see the fundamental rightness of many more short URLs being possible.

So cute, this URL! by ArsenneLupin · 2010-09-30 23:14 · Score: 1

bubbybinky

As in "let's do some bubbybinky tonight...". How fitting!

Tracking ties each click to your Google Account by Roman+Mamedov · 2010-09-30 23:43 · Score: 1

$ curl -I http://goo.gl/info/cr4p HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily Set-Cookie: authed=1;Path=/ Location: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=urlshortener&continue=http://goo.gl/info/cr4p?authed%3D1&followup=http://goo.gl/info/cr4p?authed%3D1&passive=true&go=true Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:41:25 GMT Expires: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:41:25 GMT Cache-Control: private, max-age=0 X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block Server: GSE Transfer-Encoding: chunked Thanks, but I'll keep using http://ur1.ca/ (or no shortener at all).

URLs containing titles "SKU" the field by tepples · 2010-10-01 00:28 · Score: 1

Long links with loads of parameters are a bad practice that should be avoided by good site coding conventions.

Search engines appear to encourage this by counting keywords in a URL. This leads database-driven news sites and blogs to include an article's title in its URL instead of just an article ID, and it leads online stores to include the product's short description instead of just the SKU. For example, hobby store MyAtomic did this before PayPal shut it down, allegedly for trying to compete with Toys "R" Us who shares a major investor with PayPal, but I dye grass.

120 characters by tepples · 2010-10-01 00:39 · Score: 1

Anywhere you can embed a link, it doesn't matter if it's ridiculously long

Unless, for example, a forum has an upper limit on the length of a signature.

Here is a shortened link to this thread!!! by Agent0013 · 2010-10-01 01:10 · Score: 1

This is a goo.gl shortened link to the very thread that it is placed in. Is that some sort of infinite loop or something? Am I going to unravel space-time with this?

Oh well, only one way to find out!

http://goo.gl/iiuP

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-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.

Re:Facebook by tomhudson · 2010-10-01 01:28 · Score: 1

That's pretty weird :-)

Long URL: apps.facebook.com/sororitylife/?ref_id=1648128969&send_timestamp=1281092236&track=invite-IGGiftAccept-4017-20100304-0&action=claimGift&from=1648128969&target=4017&gift_hash=95dbe118dbdb9f0dce93124f621afcb5&gift_timestamp=1281092236000
Short URL: goo.gl/tOmH
Created: Aug 6, 2010

Definitely some tester at google, since there appear to be MANY that point to the same account.

Beta? by denshao2 · 2010-10-01 03:15 · Score: 1

"404: Page not found – the page http://goo.gl/action/shorten does not exist."

Re:bit.ly? by Matt+Perry · 2010-10-01 04:10 · Score: 1

You are reading Slashdot and really have no idea what Twitter is?

That's correct. The only time I've noticed it mentioned outside of a web site is once or twice during an NPR story. Even then they don't explain what it is. I guess if it's mentioned on NPR then it's not just a computer geek thing.

I'm only interested in approximately 30% of the stories here (databases, Java, and Perl, plus a few other things) so that's usually all that I read. I only read this story because I have Google stock via a technology fund in my 401k, and I like to keep up with the things they do. I didn't know there were any URL shortening services other than tinyurl. I don't see why the net would need more than one, or would even need one in the first place. Shortening a URL seems quite pointless.

Even if you are against Twitter, or social media in general, no need to be elitist about it.

I agree. I waded into one of the Facebook related stories (I believe it was about the open source replacement) and there were a lot of posts about how people had deleted their accounts and why "you should delete yours too, right now!" They all seemed so insistent on telling others what to do. If people want to do something then let them do it. They obviously get some value out of the site or else they wouldn't expend the effort to use it.

I don't really under stand what "social media" is so I don't have a horse in this race. I signed up for MySpace once because a bunch of musicians I met at a music conference were talking about it. I didn't get it. There were only profile pages and no content. I assumed that it was an online dating site since it was asking me things such as if I'm single or married and what my sexual orientation was. I might have tried Facebook but at the time they required a .edu address. When I graduated from college the students did not have email addresses and the term email had not yet entered the public consciousness. 300 baud BBS dialup was just starting to catch on. So, in any case, when I hear the term "social media" I think "online dating." It seems like a great thing for single kids. My wife probably wouldn't be pleased if I signed up for one of those sites. :-)

I don't use it, but obviously other people do.

That statement is applicable to anything, so I'm not sure what your point is.

--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.

Does QR Codes Too by cjb110 · 2010-10-01 05:47 · Score: 1

Add .qr to the end of shortend url and you get the QR code:
So for this page: http://goo.gl/pWiq.qr

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----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person

Re:Leave it to Google to throw shareholder money a by Reapman · 2010-10-01 10:03 · Score: 1

Yes, if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that the shareholders in Google wish they never invested in such a horribly bad company *Sarcasim off*

Oh hey by justinlee37 · 2010-10-12 00:08 · Score: 1

I just felt like dropping by to remind you that you're a total moron. There are lots of reasons that you're a moron, but I don't really feel like enumerating all of them, as it is rather late in the evening.

Slashdot Mirror

Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public

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