14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced that it has acquired the g.co domain name which it will use to link to Google websites and services exclusively. The new URL shortener will live alongside goo.gl, but will only be available for Google official business.
"In the world of URLs, bigger is not always better. In 2009, we helped shrink up long, unwieldy URLs by launching our public URL shortener, goo.gl," Google's Gary Briggs wrote.
"Today, we’re announcing a new URL shortcut that will only link to official Google products and services: g.co," he announced.
Google hasn't said much other than the fact that the new domain is not open to the public. The domain is now live, but it's unclear whether Google has started actively using it and whether there are g.co-shortened links live now.
"We’ll only use g.co to send you to webpages that are owned by Google, and only we can create g.co shortcuts. That means you can visit a g.co shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service," Google explains the reason behind the new short domain name.
Whether this was a real problem or not, it perhaps does serve a purpose. When Goo.gl was launched, it was only available to Google, but it was later made public and opened to anyone.
Provided people start to recognize g.co as the official Google URL shortener, which will probably happen if the company is going to promote it, they may feel safer following one of those links.
Other companies are also creating their own, internal URL shoteners, or at least getting really short .co domains as well. Twitter has t.co and uses it for all links in tweets.
Amazon recently acquired a.co, z.co and k.co. The company hasn't revealed what it plans to do with them, but they're all related to its brands, Amazon, Zappos and Kindle.