14 DAY TRIAL // Google is continuing to revamp its sites. It announced that a new beautiful Google design was going to use across its dozens of products and sites and the roll-out has been progressing.
The latest site to get a redesign is the Google URL shortener goo.gl. The site has been around for more than a year now and, while it may not be one of Google's best known products, it is fairly popular.
The site is simple, but gets the job done. Granted, there's plenty of competition in the field, Google's big draw is its reliability, it is probably one of the safest URL shorteners out there if you care about your links being available for years to come.
It's now switched to the new Google design mantra and it's certainly an upgrade. It's not something you haven't seen before though if you've used any Google site, including the main search engine.
Apart from the visual upgrade, the shortener also has an interesting new feature, an in-line preview of the page at the end of the shortened link.
The feature is based on Instant Previews from the search engine, the technology is the same and even the interface is very similar.
It's also a nice touch, if you have a long list of links you've shortened previously and want to reuse one, you don't have to go through all of them and open them in new tabs to find the one you're looking for, just use the preview pane.
While the main goo.gl page has been updated, the details page on shortened links has not and you'll notice quite a discrepancy between the two designs.
Google started to roll out the new design when it introduced Google+, though the design was meant to be global and not specific to Google's social network.