14 DAY TRIAL // The URL shortener market just got a couple of big disruptions as possibly the two most powerful players in the web at the moment, Google and Facebook, have entered the market with their own URL shorteners. Facebook's approach is a rather cautious one, its shortener kicks in automatically only on the mobile site and only for links to pages on Facebook. Google is also taking a smaller step at first and has introduced its URL shortening service Goo.gl for just two of its products, the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.
“People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity. If you're not familiar with them, URL shorteners basically squeeze a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what's on your mind — and that's why people use them,” Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D'Angelo and Devin Mullins, software engineers explain.
So, while people will be able to use Google's URL shortener, it's not a full-blown service and can only be accessed through the two products. However, this doesn't discount opening it up to more products or even launching a dedicated service down the line and Google has built the shortener with this kind of scalability in mind.
With a huge number of shorteners to choose from, Google is touting some of the advantages of its own approach. For one, Google says stability is not an issue for Goo.gl as it's built on the company's tried and tested infrastructure, on which it runs all of its products. The second advantage is security, as Google tests all the shortened links to see if the pages don't contain malicious code using the same technology employed in the search engine. Finally, Google says speed is another big focus for the service, unsurprisingly for the company. The service will be limited to the Toolbar and FeedBurner for now, but Google says it may open it up some more if it proves popular.
If you want to try out the service for yourself, Google Toolbar for Firefox is available for download here. Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer is available for download here.