Google+ to let you get your vanity URL on in the near future

Oh look, a new feature on Google+ that its users will actually appreciate. Google today announced that it will start rolling out vanity URLs for its social effort.

That makes a big change from the random assemblage of numbers and letters that everyone’s become accustomed to.

According to Google, it made the change to make it easier to find people and brands and celebrities to make big announcements:

Today we’re introducing custom URLs to make it even easier for people to find your profile on Google+.

A custom URL is a short, easy to remember web address that links directly to your profile or page on Google+. For instance, +TOYOTA can now use google.com/+toyota to unveil their latest models, +Britney Spears can share her upcoming appearances at google.com/+britneyspears, +Ubisoft can share game trailers and videos at google.com/+assassinscreed, and +Delta can help travellers find great deals at google.com/+delta.

Custom URLs will also be available to people and pages worldwide, so brands like Globo can point readers to google.com/+epoca, or any of their other Brazilian publications.

A couple of things however remain unclear. First off, vanity URLs have been available on Facebook since 2009, so surely it would’ve paid off for Google+ to have them from the start?

Second, it’s still unclear how long it’ll take for everyone to get the new URLs. If the engineers have enough time of their hands to punk The Oatmeal, then they must have enough time to let everyone have a vanity URL. Or is that just hoping for too much sensibility?