Is a textarea the most appropriate UI element to show/hide link text like in Google Maps?

I need to show a link on my page and I'm looking for examples of how to do it well.

I looked at Google Maps and it seem开发者_开发百科s like they display the link in a textarea inside a show/hide span:

For example, if you go to a Google Maps address, on the far top right of the map there is a hyperlink called "Link" and when you click it, a small overlay pops up over the map.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Cupertino,+CA,+United+States&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.547176,55.634766&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Cupertino,+Santa+Clara,+California&ll=37.355422,-122.032013&spn=0.139453,0.217323&z=12

The textarea seems to be a good option here because their links are very long.

Is that the best UI element for this case?

Another option is to pop it up into a jQuery UI overlay and simply display the whole thing as text.

Would appreciate any pointers on where to look for this.

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My vote goes for textbox (<input type="text />) because it's easy to implement so that the links is selected when you enter the box. This makes it easy for the user to copy the link.