s/can't/won't/

In other words, a 80000-pound gorilla sits anywhere it damn wishes to. (Yes, I know that the original gorilla was two orders of magnitude smaller)

I suspect goo.gl sounds too much as a 'validated' Google link. Like the Amazon examples elsewhere in this thread. So users think falsely they can trust these links.

If true its actually surprising they kept the service going this long.

It's more about what they want to promote instead than about whether or not they can pay for it.

Perhaps they got tired of spammers and scammers making use of their URL shortening service?