At first Google gave us the URL shortener Goo.gl, but apparently that's too long. Now the official URL shortcut to all its products and services is G.co.
The shorter a URL, the easier it is to share and remember. The downside is, you often can’t tell what website you’re going to be redirected to. We’ll only use g.co to send you to webpages that are owned by Google, and only we can create g.co shortcuts. That means you can visit a g.co shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service.
The new .co domain is now a popular one in tech, especially for startups. The domain is already used by Amazon and Twitter, and seems to be a hot export for Colombia, its country of origin, according to Reuters. Overstock.com reportedly bought O.co for $350,000 last year, but now a single-character domain, such as Twitter's T.co, costs "north of $1.5 million."
If that's the case, then Google likely paid at least $1.5 million for its new URL shortener, or about $500,000 for each letter.
