URL Shortener by Google – Goo.gl

After facebook just launched their url shortener, Google has also joined the party with their own version of URL shortener – Goo.gl.

The Google URL shortener currently doesn’t work as stand-alone service as you can’t use it to shorten links directly (like you do with bit.ly). However Google URL Shortener is available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, Google says that they may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.

How To Share Pages using Gog.gl?

Sharing pages using Google toolbar is very easy. If your browser already has Google toolbar installed you should see a new green share button (very similar to the shareaholic icon

The Google share option gives you a long list of social websites where you would usually share content (e.g. twitter, facebook, digg and so on). So basically if you use the Google’s toolbar share function to share something, it will automatically use Google’s URL shortener to share the link. However, I have to say that this isn’t working for me for some reason but it looks like others are using it successfully. So give it a try!

Now why should you use Google’s URL Shortener rather than other similar services like tinyurl or bit.ly? Google in their official blog explains 3 major benefits of using their URL shortener:

Stability:Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.

Security: As Google does it with their web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.

Speed: Google loves fast products and they have worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.