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Tiny URLs shorten Web addresses

Paul Festa CNET News.com

Published: 23 Dec 2003 14:55 GMT

"All the URLs that Google has indexed will only take up seven characters, so it's possible that they will never get too long," he said.

Short, shorter, shortest
Shorlify, by contrast, is aiming for catchy, phonetically friendly URLs that are easier to remember, rather than ones that are merely short.

For the RealNames story linked to above, located at http://news.com.com/2100-1023-911942.html, Shorlify gives the alternate address http://shorl.com/huprufruvaseke. TinyURL, by contrast, addresses it http://tinyurl.com/2ntkm.

Make A Shorter Link, however, declined to shorten the URL further.

"URL already short," the site says. "If we made you a shorter link it would be longer or about the same length, so we're not going to bother."

Make A Shorter Link predates TinyURL by nearly a year -- its earliest link is dated 9 July, 2001.

Founder Matthew Hunt said it originated also from concerns about posting URLs to newsgroup discussions, and that the total number of links numbered just over 450,000.

Hunt doesn't have any pecuniary ambitions, though.

"I'm happy to subsidise it as a free service for as long as people use it," he said. "The other contributors are of like mind, freely providing time and resources to keep it all going."