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Google made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items. First, Google has added a new share button to the Google Toolbar , which allows users to share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google announced that with Feedburner, you can now set your feeds up to post to Twitter . The thing that these two announcements have in common is that they both utilize a new URL shortener from Google. They tried to slip that in their quietly a couple of times, but then went ahead and made an announcement about the service itself. The shortening service is located at goo.gl , but it is not available for broad consumer use at this point. Google is just using it itself to compliment the aforementioned services. In other words, you can't just go to goo.gl and shorten a URL yourself. However, Google says that in time, it may offer such an option. "We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links," Google says. They also say the core goals of the Google URL Shortener are: - Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime - Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages - Speed – fast resolution of short URLs Google's standard privacy policy applies to goo.gl. The company says that it may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end use clicks. On a related note, Facebook also now has its own URL shortener. Continue reading →