The URL shortener market just got a couple of big disruptions as possibly the two most powerful players in the web at the moment, Google and Facebook, have entered the market with their own URL shorteners. Facebook’s approach is a rather cautious one, its shortener kicks in automatically only on the mobile site and only for links to pages on Facebook. Google is also taking a smaller step at first and has introduced its URL shortening service Goo.gl for just two of its products, the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.
“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,” Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Ben D’Angelo and Devin Mullins, software engineers explain.
So, while people will be able to use Google’s URL shortener, it’s not a full-blown service and can only be accessed through the two products. However, this doesn’t discount opening it up to more products or even launching a dedicated service down the line… (read more)