Google is finally figuring out that short links are just easier to deal with, especially on a mobile phone. No, it is not rolling out its own URL shortening service just yet (bit.ly, stand down). But today it is introducing what it calls “smart links” to the mobile version of Gmail.
When it recognizes a super-long link like the one for Google Maps shown above right, it will shorten it to the underlying name thing being linked to. In this case, it is an address (below right)
Basically, it translates the URL into English. Gmail’s smart links also work for direction destinations on Google Maps, and the names of YouTube videos and Google Sites pages. It is starting with Google-owned properties, where it knows the underlying names. But it doesn’t need to be limited to those.
It seems like a good idea and one which could be expanded to other links across the Web, including news headlines, image titles, Tweets, and countless other things. I kind of wish I could enable this feature in regular Gmail as well.
That’s just down the street from where I am right now. When are you going to be here in Waterloo Erick?
Next time my Blackberry goes silent for a week and I need to find an engineer who can fix it.
KDUB IN THE (TC) HOUSE!!!
Oh really? Is that right , now? LOL
this is great! Since most important sites in the next year or two will (if they haven’t yet), will be SEO’d, most people’s URL structures should follow the title of the article and be filled with keywords telling what the link is about (re: blogposts on wordpress, and the link to this article). So this should totally work for links in the future with no problem.
Isn’t this just a plain HTML anchor tag? The text used here is nothing but the original text searched for on Google maps.
I doubt there’s a lot of innovation going on here. HTML links have been around for over 15 years.
it’s innovative because nobody’s doing it (although they should have) – everything else requires you to go to someplace and convert the link. This is pretty seamless – and wonderful!
I suspect nobody was doing it in the past because we hadn’t reached critical mass for phones that were able to render HTML emails, and sending the link clear text, as ugly as it was, at least ensures that it could be selected. The iPhone’s popularity may have been the tipping point.
However, this comment on the Google blog post seems to suggest something else is going on: ‘Please note that Smart Links work only in plaintext emails right now.’.
That’s the problem with us geeks. You can’t announce a tiny new feature without us picking at it and wanting to know how it works
Correct.
Joost, I’m sure it is but at least it is a nice addition. I use Gmail on my iPhone and I have to say it is great.
Yeah I fail to see the innovative concept
This is a great feature. I wish it worked on the iPhone mail app.
If you do want to create short URL’s for maps, check out http://aMAP.to (which uses the Google Maps API)
Short links on mobile are always a good thing when screen real estate is at a premium.
Really this is great and useful feature of Google and its too helpful for iphone email applications.