Chocolate Factory does url shortening

Google has launched its own url-shortening service along the lines of TinyURL and Bit.ly. Dubbed Goo.gl, the service is available with the latest versions of Google's browser toolbar and FeedBurner RSS service, both released today. A URL shortener lets you shrink lengthy web addresses into just a few characters. They've …

[Mage]

I hate them

I hate them

[Anonymous Coward]

I use them lots...

...to trick people into visiting dodgy sites they would otherwise not visit.

These things need banning, or at least people should refuse to use them and let them die naturally. Just geek toys they are.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure they're not tracking every shortened URL...

...and tying it to your Google cookie.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they are

I'm sure they are, given the way Google stores every search against the cookie, and Google analytics stores every URL visited, I'm absolutely certain they would log and use this too.

[A J Stiles]

Not mine, they don't

Google Analytics is just one of many sites I have blocked at the nameserver, and I renew my Google Cookie often.

[Benedict Addis]

TLD

The CC TLD is Greenland, for those that were wondering...

[McMoo]

I'm glad they chose a crap name

Google really is getting too big, too scary, and too evil.

I'm glad the chose a crap name for this service, and I hope it doesn't catch on.

What's worse, is the way Google pretend to be saintly, but in reality are damn evil. That makes me sick. They get away with what MS never can, all because of the lies they and their fans spread.

[Wrenchy]

@ I hate them

>> I hate them

Fine. Go ahead and hate them. Just think where we would be without Google. Still working with 10mb webmail accounts, search engines that are useless, no real threat to Microsoft, and lots of other things.

If I had a choice of of Microsoft or Google, I know who I'd go to bed with...

[Anonymous Coward]

Think it through

"Where would we be without Google"? Come on. Continue the thought and stop being a sheep...

Where /will/ we be with Google?

You're going to wake up in your bed, chained to it.

They're taking over the internet and they're doing it unopposed. Worse, sheeple are still bahhing about how they saved the world from M$ dependency. Whether that is true or not (and it's debatable), they have assumed the mantel of the globally dominating mega-corp.

Is some poor, sad, sheep now going to seriously suggest "choice" as a defence for these technological carnivores?

[Obvious Robert]

@AC 10.03

As regards your comment about choice, which Google services do you use that can't be replaced by alternatives?

MS have the monopoly on PC operating systems. It's way more complicated for average Joe to learn a new OS and all the headaches that come with it than it is for a tech savvy user like yourself to use a different search engine or webmail account.

And now you're getting your knickers in a twist and announcing the end of civilisation because they've started a url shortening service?

Hmmm.

[Graham Dawson]

TO use an absolutely terrible and highly offensive analogy...

Where would we be. Think about it... motorways, affordable cars, more and cheaper land, the rocket, the jet plane...

Fro this end of history we take all these things for granted, but in another era, not so long ago, all of this was brand new and all of it was promised for only a small price of an entire nation's soul.

Granted the analogy isn't perfect, however the point remains: allowing what might be loosely termed bad behaviour, or the "evil" of allowing one corporation to be the final arbiter of what information you are allowed to find on the internet, in exchange for a few trifles and trinkets is at the very best short-sighted and at worst wilfully ignorant of how these sort of things turn out. When a single entity controls your access to information, as Google is trying to do right now, you are no longer free.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't click on tinyURLSs

If you can't cut-and-paste a real URL, don't expect me to click on anything else.

[Jeremy 2]

Long URL please!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9549

Those damn hideous obfuscated URLs get everywhere. This lengthens them back to their former glory/infamy, which is handy. Hopefully support for Google's new serv^H^H^H^H advertising platform will be forthcoming.

[Stef 2]

Grow up

So much knee-jerk Google bashing - if you're really that scared then go home and play your gramophone records, nice and safe from the world outside.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will make informed decisions on a case-by-case basis.

Personally, I prefer tinyurl which allows a full URL preview before you redirect - a feature I'd think Google would likely incorporate eventually.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Wrenchy

I had a 100mb account with Lycos (a 1gb with some other provider who's name escapes me) , well before gmail

Hotbot and metacrawler were good search engines (until they got bogged down) running other peoples crap and threat to MS? If you mean in the replacing one monopoly with another, then I guess that's good.

Of course you proberbly belive they do it all for the good of the world and the billions in revenue is just a sideline....

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have called it.

GURLS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, the company also believes it's better

that every http request in the world goes through its cybertracking admangle rather than anyone else's hardware"

[Barney Carroll]

Not enraged!

For the record, I read this through in one sitting, waited a minute to consider the implications, and at no point suffered from steaming brain syndrome.

[Dale Richards]

Nostalgia

Does anyone else remember back when these services first became popular? Before all this "face space" and "twatter" nonsense, it was just a way to stop a pasted link wrapping over multiple lines, causing Outlook Express to do a brain fart when the clueless recipients tried to click on it.

I seem to remember the first service to gain popularity was called makeashorterlink.com. Great idea, but in their naïvety they failed to realise that others would come along and make... Even Shorter Links!

[Anonymous Coward]

name parsing

at least "goo.gl" is easy to read as its meant to me .... I remember a few months back when my wife asked me what all this "Tin Yurl" website was about as she kept on seeing it but had no idea what Yurl's were - and whether they were made from Tin or not made no difference!

[Richard Hodgson]

Can't wait...

...for the spammers using these services to try and steal people's Google Account details, posing as a site hosted by them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome + Google Toolbar

Were not compatible last time I checked...

has that changed? or is this service not for chrome users?

[wsm]

Domain of the short

Shortened attention spans, shortened effort, shortened (nearly incomprehensible) messages can all be blamed on information overload.

But when you have 400 staff members who can't put a link back together from a message sent through an e-mail system out of your control, the shortened links can be a blessing. Except when the aforementioned arbitrary e-mail administrators block things like bit.ly because of the abuses of others.

My point is that everything has its use, but how do Greenland feel about this? Isn't Google a country of its own?