Link-shorteners are a cancer. We have enough of a problem with historical links going dead, without interposing a third party.
When bit.ly goes down, what happens to all their links?
When bit.ly goes down, what happens to all their links?
Unfortunately, sometimes brevity is a necessity.
edit: original comment mentioned twitter, then I remembered twitter automatically reduces a URL's chars to 20 or so.
(that only answers the HN part, I'm guessing that is much of the reasoning, I don't know it for a fact)