Google gets into the URL shortener game

Google stuck one of its far reaching tentacles today into another tech pie, adding “URL shortener” to it’s jack-of-all-trades resume.

The new service, goo.gl, isn’t available for straight-up URL truncating yet- you have use it through Google Toolbar or Feed Burner. But if the service proves popular, unlike the immediate flops GMail, Google Docs and Google itself, goo.gl will be opened up for “broader consumer use.”

Google is selling the new URL shortener on three points:

Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.

Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.

Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.

Google wasn’t the only one getting all up in bit.ly’s grill today- Inside Facebook pointed out that the social networking site is automatically truncating links to fb.me. That also works for Facebook pages, so facebook.com/Etsy works if you just go to fb.me/etsy.