Monday, July 18, 2011

Google Unveils Official Link Shortener

Mountain View-based Google said today that it has rolled out another, URL link shortening service, g.co. The firm said the URL shortcut will only link to official, Google products and services. The new service is on top of the firm's existing, public URL shortener, goog.gl. Google said it will continue to operate goo.gl, but needed a URL which people could associate with sites owned by Google and trusted by users. The firm appears to be looking to avoid the issue of confusion of users through URL masking, a technique where criminals take advantage of link shorteners to phish for financial information or direct users to malware.