Google announced that will be using their official internal URL shortener, g.co, for allowing Google Maps users to send out short links to maps.
Personally, I always hated the really long URLs I had to send to clients and friends to find my office and my home. In fact, I hated it so much, I simply made rustybrick.com/map redirect to the long URL of my office location on Google Maps.
Also, Google did have a Labs product that had short URLs but that went away and is now replaced by an option for all users to use. Here is what it looks like:
It even works on Place pages, here is a link to my company's place page: http://g.co/maps/du4h. Heck, if you have time and like our work, drop us a review. Hate us, no need to leave a review. ;-)
In any event, I am very happy Google added this because there is nothing worse than sending a long URL in an email that gets cut off.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
