Now a URL Shortener from Google

Google has announced a URL shortening service, like bit.ly, TinyUrl and other URL shortening services. It is called “goo.gl”. However, currently, Google URL shortener service cannot be used directly to shorten the links like what is offered by bit.ly; you can use “goo.gl” only from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. But, Google has promised to make its URL shortening service available for a wider audience at a later stage.

There are certain security risk of shortened URLs. But, Google has promised to take care of the security risk in its URL shortening service, by ensuring that shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites. Moreover, Google has highlighted stable character of its URL shortening service in view of Google’s scalable and multi-datacenter infrastructure that can provide great uptime and a reliable service to the users. It has also promised speed in the matter of this new service. Likewise, since Google is a prominent player on Internet, you can expect continuity in its services, due to which you can rest assured that this shortened URLs will be available in future also and will not suddenly disappear that can happen if such a service is provided by an unknown or less-known company.

So, how does it work? As mentioned above, at present Google URL shortener will work only from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. Let’s take the example as to how it works on Google Toolbar, that is available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers. You’ll have to download the latest toolbar for this purpose, if you’ve not done it already. Once you’ve installed the latest version of Google Toolbar that supports this feature, a “Share this..” button will appear on the Toolbar, as shown in the following figure:

When you click on this “Share this…” button, and select Twitter for popup menu, for example, to share the current web page open in the browser, it will automatically open a new browser window with the title of the current page and a link to that web page that has been shortened with Google URL shortener (see figure below):

You can try it yourself.

• Use Google URL Shortener through Chrome Extension or directly on web
• Security risk of shortened URLs
• Shorten your URLs with bit.ly and get also many other features
• Shorten long web addresses into small URLs with TinyURL
• Automatically publicize your new blog posts to Twitter with FeedBurner
• Run Internet Explorer in a tab in Google Chrome for sites that need IE
• Microsoft beats Google on Internet too!
• Translate any web page in Firefox with a click using Google Toolbar
• Google and Bing in single page – you select the best
• Google Chrome may get extensions soon – may improve its market share