In an awesome article on TechCrunch titled “Bit.ly Just Got Fu.kd: Facebook And Google Get Into The Short URL Game” we know know that Google has launched Goo.gl which is a URL shrinking service to be used solely by Google based applications and services. Facebook will probably develop their own propriety URL shrinking service and now Bit.Ly which still is one of the best URL shrinking services and heavily used on Twitter will face some stiff competition.
Unfortunately this sucks for the users of the various social media services out there, as you can no longer get your analytics and tracking from a single source. It would be nice if Google opened its URL shortening service to everything including Twitter, Ping.FM, Plurk, Facebook, Digg and more. By keeping it proprietary to its own services it makes it more of a pain to track analytics from shortened URL’s. I already have to log into Bit.ly, Hootsuite and Su.Pr to track my various clicks and metrics for the week, I am going to be even more annoyed if I have to log into Facebook and Google to track additional shortened URL’s.
Users should have the choice of choosing a “default URL shortening” service and it be used for all applications, but this mean the URL shortening service needs to be large enough and popular enough and the company must push to have it included as an option in as many products as possible.
Whats next, Google Search results showing you the shortened URL instead of the full URL of the site hosting the page you are looking for? That would be terrible not knowing what page you were clicking on to find the information you were looking for.
-Dragon Blogger
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Tags: facebook tiny url, facebook url shortening, facebook url shrink, Goo.gl, Google joins URL Shortening, google news, google url shortener, google url shrink, news on google, shrink your url, shrinking urls, shrinkingurl, url shortening, url shrinking
December 14th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I don’t think is a big problem. I don’t usually look at the link when I search at Google. Title is the most important.
Jayce´s last blog ..How to hack Facebook account profile
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December 14th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Ah, but would you hold the same title on CNN.com as the same weight as the title on a small time blog? Knowing what site hosts the article has a huge influence over whether the person clicks on it or not.
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December 14th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
There are just too many URL shorteners out there at the moment. Although I guess the more is the merrier
Michael Aulia @Technology and Reviews´s last blog ..Razer Imperator Unboxings
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December 14th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Google is getting their hands into everything it seems. Competition is usually good, but I wonder if they simply won’t crush everyone else because they are simply Google.
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December 16th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Didnt get you!! why do we need analytics from these guys and not use our own.. Google Analytics for example. Have not used url shorteners too often.. so excuse me if the comment is silly.
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May 8th, 2010 at 2:13 am
This is probably part of Google’s attempt to take over as king of the DNS function.
Is this a good thing to let Google get so powerful? I’m not so sure, but these things start slowly, ramp up, and then we have another Microsoft on our hands… Oh well, I guess that’s better than apple and Jobs controlling more than their tiny little sandbox, but still, monopolies do no one any good in the long run.
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