Is Goo.gl really the fastest URL shortener? (chart)
A few weeks ago, Google made its URL shortener, Goo.gl, open for everyone and gave it its own website, similar to Bit.ly's. Previously, Goo.gl could only be used by Google's own services. — When they announced this …
Context & Ripple Effects
The speed question Royal Pingdom charts is a direct sequel to the concern TechCrunch raised in March, when it measured how much URL shorteners slow down the web, singling out Facebook's FB.me as the worst offender. Latency had become the differentiator in a category otherwise competing on brand and analytics.
Google entered that race from the inside out: it first built the shortener quietly into its own products via the Toolbar and FeedBurner in December 2009, then opened Goo.gl to everyone with its own website at the end of September 2010. A month later, independent benchmarks testing whether Google's entry actually beats incumbents like Bit.ly are the market's first real quality check on that opening.
First-order effects
- Bit.ly, which has been the de facto default for shared links, now competes against a Google-run alternative whose pitch is measured response time rather than features.
Second-order effects
- Publishers and tool makers choosing a shortener gain a concrete latency benchmark, shifting selection criteria from convenience toward measured performance — pressure every incumbent shortener must answer with its own numbers.
Third-order effects
- If speed becomes the deciding metric, shortening consolidates around players with large distributed infrastructures like Google and Facebook, commoditizing the redirect itself and pushing smaller services toward analytics as their remaining differentiator — while anyone embedding short links inherits a dependency on that provider keeping the service alive.
The trend: URL shortening is moving from a utility side-project to an infrastructure battleground where platform giants compete on measured speed, leaving the redirect commoditized and analytics as the durable value layer.