Is it just me, or was I able to "shorten" an already goo.gl shortened url?
http://goo.gl/fBUb --> http://goo.gl/Bkmv --> http://news.ycombinator.com
They don't want to allow this, do they?
Google URL shortener available to the public
61–70 of 126 posts
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#62[edit - Nevermind, solved below in the comments.] Does anyone know how these work long-term? This one shortens a URL to 4 characters, so for a potentially major URL shortener, there is a relatively low number of possible outputs. Once they hit their limit, do they start erasing the oldest ones? The most inactive ones? For shorteners that give consistent shortened URLs (i.e. everytime you shorten the same input URL, y…
> Once they hit their limit, do they start erasing the oldest ones? The most inactive ones? Let's do the math. If we assume that a service only uses a-z, A-Z and 0-9 as characters for the shortened URL, we have a set of 62 characters. /x -> 62 /xx -> 62^2 = 3,844 /xxx -> 62^3 = 238,328 /xxxx -> 62^4 = 14,776,336 /xxxxx -> 62^5 = 916,132,832 /xxxxxx -> 62^6 = 56,800,235,584 In the worst case scenario, the URL shortene…
56,800,235,584 URLs ought to be enough for anyone... :)
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same question. Until last week when I sent out a link to a google spreadsheet, and my awesome Navy Marine Corps Intranet Windows XP/Outlook 2007/Exchange system broke the link across two lines (but only after it was sent), and then every single recipient (about 100 physicians) said they couldn't see the document. I now use tinyurl.
The thing is, it feels like even in those cases, the service should be shortening its own URLs.
> Google needed a url shortener for its own products where we knew the shortener wouldn’t go away
Isn't that what this post is about?
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#64Nice simple public stats: http://goo.gl/info/Jvhu#two_hours Not a huge fan of the flash chart though. http://goo.gl/Jvhu http://goo.gl/Jvhu.qr EDIT: Better graph
Strange... : I clicked in the above url. Then I copied the resulting url ( http://www.magicbeef.com/ ) After pasting it in google service, it produced a different short url: http://goo.gl/YH1c I first assumed that every destination would render an unique short url, but thats not the case. This way google knows the full stats of http://www.magicbeef.com/ . But you can only know the real stats if you know ALL the short…
I wonder if Google has an API to get all stats or an API to get all short links pointing to a URL.
PS: That means there is still atleast one HNer using internet explorer.
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#65Why do we need url shorteners again ? When I see a shortened URL the probabilities of me clicking the link go down to almost zero.
I don't know about need, but I often use them for emails. I prefer a plain text email program (so no HTML mail to hide the link), and it's been my experience that many receiving email clients break overly long URLs. So I use Metamark[1], which I have a reasonable trust won't disappear in a week or a month. I understand that you might not like short URLs in the wild (so to speak), but do you really not follow short li…
> it's been my experience that many receiving email clients break overly long URLs
I always use the "embed in angle brackets" trick for that--although I don't know how all mail readers render it:
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#66Now can we get a bookmarket? anyone?
faramarz, bookmarklets like http://www.labnol.org/internet/googl-bookmarklet/11871/ should work just fine. To get history/analytics, just login to goo.gl and you're good to go.
Instead of a bookmarklet, I prefer to use this Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/iblijlcdoidgdpfk...
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#67goo.gl has been around for quite a while. Is there something new I don't see here? Edit: Ah, its website is just new. Here the original post: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-url-short... There was already a Chrome extension since the beginning.
Earlier they did not offer custom URL shortening. goo.gl was used by Google services like Reader, YouTube but it was not open to public.
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#68Just out of interest - do the top level DNSs look at the entire address or is Greenland's main internet supplier going to melt under the load of redirecting everything to Google?
My guess is that Greenland can handle the load just fine. :)
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#69Could they not have bought http://g.gl ?
No, we couldn't. Unfortunately, Greenland doesn't sell X.gl or XX.gl domains. So goo.gl was the shortest we could get.
Re: Google URL shortener available to the public
#70goo.gl has been around for quite a while. Is there something new I don't see here? Edit: Ah, its website is just new. Here the original post: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-url-short... There was already a Chrome extension since the beginning.
Earlier they did not offer custom URL shortening. goo.gl was used by Google services like Reader, YouTube but it was not open to public.
Hm but with that Chrome extension, it worked. So I guess there was an open API already.