They have to have a product for every conceivable market… but this one's not for standalone use. Well, not yet:
It looks like today has quickly become URL shortener day. Just moments ago, we learned about fb.me, Facebook’s new URL shortener. It’s already in use for mobile and page link sharing and spreading quickly.
One of Facebook’s mortal enemies couldn’t let the social network have all of the fun and attention, though. Google has just launched Goo.gl, the official Google URL shortener of the world’s largest search engine.
In a short announcement, the tech giant revealed that the Google Toolbar and the FeedBurner syndication service now utilize Goo.gl for link sharing.
Search Engine Journal makes the obvious point, albeit with bad English, that it won't be long before Google allows “goo.gl” to be used much like bit.ly is today:
Google said that URL shortener is currently being tested yet. Hence it was rolled out as a feature of Google Toolbar and Feedburner. But they are planning to make it available as a stand-alone product once they’ve proven it to be useful. I’m pretty sure it will soon be available on a wider audience pretty soon.
Oh, and by the way, Google says:
The Google privacy policy applies to the Google URL Shortener. Please note that Google may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end user clicks.
In other words, screw user privacy.
So much for tinyurl and bit.ly, the pioneers of short URLs. They'll be history soon.