URL Shortening - History

History

An early reference is US Patent 6957224, which describes

...a system, method and computer program product for providing links to remotely located information in a network of remotely connected computers. A uniform resource locator (URL) is registered with a server. A shorthand link is associated with the registered URL. The associated shorthand link and URL are logged in a registry database. When a request is received for a shorthand link, the registry database is searched for an associated URL. If the shorthand link is found to be associated with an URL, the URL is fetched, otherwise an error message is returned.

The patent was filed in September 2000; while the patent was issued in 2005, patent applications are made public within 18 months of filing.

Another reference to URL shortening was in 2001. The first notable URL shortening service, TinyURL, was launched in 2002. Its popularity influenced the creation of at least 100 similar websites, although most are simply domain alternatives. Initially Twitter automatically translated long URLs using TinyURL, although it began using bit.ly in 2009.

In May 2009, the service .tk, which previously generated memorable domains via URL redirection, launched tweak.tk, which generates very short URLs. On 14 August 2009, WordPress announced the wp.me URL shortener for use when referring to any WordPress.com blog post. In November 2009, shortened links on bit.ly were accessed 2.1 billion times. Around that time, bit.ly and TinyURL were the most widely used URL-shortening services.

On 10 August 2009, however, tr.im, announced that it was curtailing the generation of new shortened URLs, but assured that existing tr.im short URLs would "continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009". A blog post on the site attributed this move to several factors, including a lack of suitable revenue-generating mechanisms to cover ongoing hosting and maintenance costs, a lack of interest among possible purchasers of the service and Twitter's default use of the bit.ly shortener. This blog post also questioned whether other shortening services can successfully make money from URL shortening in the longer term. A few days later, tr.im appeared to alter its stance, announcing that it would resume all operations "going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im's future" but, as of July 11, 2011, the tr.im service failed.

In December 2009, the URL shortener TO./ NanoURL was launched by .TO. This service creates a URL address which looks like http://to./xxxx, where xxxx represents a combination of random numbers and letters. NanoURL currently generates the shortest URLs of all URL shortening services, because it is hosted on a top-level domain (the one of Tonga). This rare form of URL may cause problems with some browsers, however, where the string is interpreted as a search term and passed to a search engine, instead of being opened. As of 2011, the service is no longer available.

On 14 December 2009, Google announced a service called Google URL Shortener at goo.gl, which originally was only available for use through Google products (such as Google Toolbar and FeedBurner). It does, however, have two extensions (Standard and Lite versions) for Google Chrome. On 21 December 2009, Google also announced a service called YouTube URL Shortener, youtu.be, and since September 2010, Google URL Shortener has become available via a direct interface, Google's direct link (goo.gl) will ask you to prove you're not a robot with CAPTCHA (May 2012).