Google shortens URLs

ASPIRING INTERNET DASHBOARD Google has launched revisions of its Toolbar and Feedburner applications that come with a new URL shortening feature.

Presumably Google's Naming department has taken off for Christmas early, as the service is simply called the "Google URL Shortener". Either that or the person who came up with Google Mail, Google Apps, and Google News is still in charge.

Google said in a blog post that because people share a lot of information online, this often involves sending URLs, something that it added can detract from the message itself, or take up too many of its precious characters.

"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," wrote Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D'Angelo and Devin Mullins, software engineers at Google.

Although other, comparable services like TinyURL and Bit.ly exist and have been around for much longer, Google thinks that its name, and the reassurances that it brings about quality and stability will appeal to users. "We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible - making it faster and easier to share, post and email links. Second, we've built this on Google's global infrastructure", the engineers wrote, before mentioning things like the firm's scalable, multi-centre environment, and security features.

For example, they said shortened URLs would be automatically fed through a security checker, making sure that they do not link through to malicious sites. Other benefits include the speed of the service, they added.

Although currently only available through the Toolbar and Feedburner systems, the bloggers added, "If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future". µ