Google rolls out Goo.gl URL shortening service for 3 reasons

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | December 15 2009 10:14 AM

With already 72 percent of U.S. search engine market share, Google appears to want more. The company announced Tuesday a new URL shortener called Goo.gl, in a bid to continue its dominance over the web.

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In a blog post to announce the new service, Google said its rolling out the URL shortener for three reasons: to offer stability, security and speed improvements compared to similar online services.

“People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity.”

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 Google software engineers in a blog post

URL shortening services like Bit.ly and TinyURL have become popular thanks to the growing success of Twitter. Even Facebook wants a piece of the action with its own URL shortening service called fb.me.

Goo.gl will only on Google's latest Toolbar and their Feedburner RSS service.

To use Goo.gl, a user must download the latest Google Toolbar and restart his or her Web browser. When that's completed, users will see this green share icon in the Toolbar.

If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future, Google said.