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

[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

[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?

Chop off two letters

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Keep working?

[Leebert]

and it will keep working

Like Wave, right?

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.