If I remember correctly, one of the purposes for goo.gl was for Google to get metrics on how such direct-links spread "out of band" and how often they were open

If I remember correctly, one of the purposes for goo.gl was for Google to get metrics on how such direct-links spread "out of band" and how often they were opened (as they would direct people to pages without Google acting as intermediary). I guess Chrome metrics and URL-suffixes now answer this better (and so they probably failed to justify the internal budget to keep it)...