Beefing up goo.gl with new features

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

Since we launched our URL shortener goo.gl last September, we’ve been lucky enough to build a thriving and growing community of passionate users who aren’t shy about letting us know when something could be better. We appreciate the feedback, and today we’ve completed a series of feature rollouts aimed at addressing your most common requests.

Copy to clipboard

Now you can easily copy new short URLs to your clipboard, a frequently requested feature on our forums. When a new short URL is created, the text on the page will automatically be highlighted, and you can simply press Control+C (or Command+C on a Mac) to copy it.

Remove from dashboard

You can also now remove items from your dashboard, so that you can see a quick summary of only your most important links and hide the ones you no longer need. Please note that when you hide a short URL, you’re only removing it from your own dashboard. The URL will still exist and work. You can’t add short URLs back into your dashboard once you’ve hidden them, so be sure you won’t need to find that short URL from your dashboard later. Remember that you can always view analytics for any of your short URLs by appending a “+” to the end of them (e.g., http://goo.gl/rQ6HT+). This feature will be rolling out over the next several days, and may not work immediately on mobile devices.

Spam reporting

Many of you told us that you’d like a way to tell us about goo.gl URLs that lead to spam sites. We recently set up goo.gl/spam-report for just that purpose. So far it’s helped us a lot in identifying and blocking short URLs that lead to spam, so keep those reports coming.

Ongoing speed and stability improvements

Even as we add features, we continue to focus on making goo.gl one of the fastest and most reliable URL shorteners on the web. We’ll continue working hard to ensure that we add minimal latency to the user experience and extend our track record of rock-solid reliability—we’ve had no service outages since we launched last September.

Content Rating for Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Tim Bray]

Providing users with more information about applications on Android Market has been a top request from Android users. Starting in a few weeks, we will be showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This new capability will provide users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them.

Android Market’s content policy remains the same as before: applications will be rated according to four content rating levels: All, Pre-teen, Teen, & Mature. Details on the rating levels can be found at Android Market Help Center.

To prepare for this launch, starting next week, developers submitting new or updated applications will be required to include a rating for all applications and games uploaded onto Android Market. In addition, developers will have the next several weeks to add a rating to their existing applications and games. Once content rating is visible to users, any applications or games that do not include a rating will be treated as “Mature”.

We are working hard to rapidly deliver improvements and upgrades to Android Market. Please look for more Android Market upgrades in the coming weeks. Thanks for your continued support and please don’t hesitate to give us feedback on what else we can do to make you more successful with Android and Android Market.