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Why do we need shorter and shorter URLs? Goo.gl was short enough - is this just because of Twitter's (semi-arbitrary) 140 char limit?

In my view, shorteners should be for making URLs more manageable, human-readable, paste-able, etc - not for saving space necessarily.

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I suggest clicking on the link before asking obvious questions.

"Whenever you see a short “g.co” link, you can trust that it will always take you to a Google product or service. We also have a public URL shortener at goo.gl. You can use this to shorten up URLs across the web."

They reason they are doing this instead of just using goo.gl is g.co will only go to Google products. Anyone can create a goo.gl link and potentially send you to a phishing site.

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