Developers can celebrate, Google service to shorten url’s now has an API. Now you can access it in an easy and fast way or press it raw as "Give me a short link now!" .
In the Google team announcement they quote the Google search Royal Pingdom’s on the fastest link shorteners. As for reliability, Bit.ly is a great competitor to Google's shortener, but when it comes to speed, Google always wins. The main difference between Google and competitors is that it has servers all over the world, which favors system speed.
Don't forget that Google still applies a great spam and malware filter to short links. Why don't you use it? Click here.