Google Rolls Out New URL Shortening Service
If you need a short url to replace your long URL, you will soon have another choice. Today Google announced their new URL shortening service, goo.gl. According to goo.gl, the benefits of using goo.gl over bit.ly or is.gd or tgli.de – the other two popular url shortening services – is stability, security, and speed. However, the service is not available for general use. It is only available for “Google products” – whatever that means.
The other new contender in the URL shortening game is Facebook with fb.me.
The benefits of a short url are obvious – you can shrink a 30+ character url (is.gd limits the long URL to 2,000 characters!) down to a dozen characters or less. You can also track hits and even create custom short URLs. Bit.ly does an excellent job of keep track of your shortened URLs and hits to your short URLs. Is.gd doesn’t keep track but allows flexibility of the use of keywords in your URL. Short URLs last “forever.” We have yet to discover the usability of goo.gl short URLs.
