Your URL Shortener is Slowing Down the Web

Filed in archive General on March 18, 2010

I knew that URL shorteners were somehow evil; now I have proof...

TechCrunch reported today that URL shorteners slow down the web. Some more than others.

URL shorteners have been around for a while. TiyURL was the first such service, started in 2002. Since then there's been bit.ly, tr.im, and a dozen or more other URL shorteners. And the services has become something of a signature or branding device for major web services. So there is a Google URL shortener, a YouTube URL shortener, a Facebook URL shortener, etc.

The TechCrunch piece looked at the question of URL shortener speed and found that some of them slow down your movement on the web quite significantly. Others are not some bad. Check out the TechCrunch article to see which ones are any good.