Back in September, Google formally launched goo.gl, the official URL shortener from the tech giant. The service first went into operation late in 2009 and was tied to Google’s own products, like Google Toolbar, but now it’s a direct competitor to the myriad consumer-focused shorteners, the most famous of which is bit.ly. Today, goo.gl has announced a handful of new features that should make fans of the service happy.
First up is easier copy and pasting — after you submit a link, Google will automatically highlight the resulting shortened URL, which means you can immediately hit Control-C to copy it. No, not a huge deal (and rivals like bit.ly already do the same thing), but if you use this as part of your workflow, you’ll appreciate it.
Next, you can now remove URLs that are shown on your dashboard. Again, another minor feature — but one that comes in handy if you’re a big Goo.gl user. As you use the service, it builds a list of URLs you’ve generated and displays how many clicks each has received. But that list got cluttered fast if you frequently used it. Now you’ll be able to highlight your most important links while hiding the ones that you don’t care so much about.
Google also goes out of its way to say that it has had zero downtime since the service launched in September, which is notable because URL shorteners are often criticized for adding additional latency and points of failure to the web.
Finally, you can now report spammy links. Hooray!
