Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public 244
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?"
Re:complete with tracking and statistics (Score:5, 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.
Shortfight! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always preferred SoCuteURL [socuteurl.com]. 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 [socuteurl.com] (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/ [urlshorten...witter.com] -- but they refuse to "shorten" http://goo.gl/ [goo.gl] for me, saying "This URL has been rejected to prevent the universe from collapsing on itself."
Re:Testing the goo.gl (Score:3, Interesting)
As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week [goo.gl]
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like Wave, right?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics (Score:2, 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)
Security check while generating shortened link? (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?
Re:complete with tracking and statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
Please mod parent down - it's NSFW.
Re:complete with tracking and statistics (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 (Score:3, Interesting)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/162021/ [mozilla.org]
This Firefox add-on (Their homepage http://long-shore.com/ [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.
blah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Chop off two letters (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't. GL domain registration requires at least 3 letters.
Also, their domains apparently cost $95 per year, which seems a little steep.