Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public

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?"

Comments

complete with tracking and statistics

[Galestar]

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

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[LostCluster]

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

[pitchpipe]

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

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[nigelo]

Please mod parent down - it's NSFW.

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[Shikaku]

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

[tomhudson]

The best one? try cr4p - it links to Facebook. Easy to remember, and pretty descriptive.

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[beakerMeep]

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.

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[WCguru42]

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.

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[HybridST]

I got a rock...

Re:complete with tracking and statistics

[tomhudson]

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?

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is bit.ly shaking in its boots?

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

Re:Who?

[YoshiDan]

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...

Chop off two letters

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Chop off two letters

[c6gunner]

Can't. GL domain registration requires at least 3 letters.

Also, their domains apparently cost $95 per year, which seems a little steep.

Unique feature

[RichardDeVries]

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?

Re:Testing the goo.gl

[E IS mC(Square)]

As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week

Shortfight!

[RobertB-DC]

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."

Re:Testing the goo.gl

[RobertB-DC]

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!

Keep working?

[Leebert]

and it will keep working

Like Wave, right?

Re:Keep working?

[deinol]

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?

FOR FREE OMG

[Punto]

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

TinyURL

[klui]

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

Re:TinyURL

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[randomsearch]

http://goo.gl/cr4p+

The power of slashdot.

RS

Re:Too bad for case-sentive

[dr. greenthumb]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[blackgod]

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?

Re:So, who's going to be the 1st to shorten goatse

[tomhudson]

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.

I Am Not a Number

[handy_vandal]

I am not a number!

I am the aggregate of a huge array of numbers!

No preview?

[houghi]

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.

Still less reliable than a real URL

[noidentity]

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.

blah

[bob0the0mighty]

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

In this day of drive by attacks...

[Nyder]

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.

Ahh, but does it protect you from. . .

[JSBiff]

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:Too bad for case-sentive

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Re:Leave it to Google to throw shareholder money a

[Anonymous Psychopath]

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.