Doesn't matter if most of the links being generated are still at bit.ly. The issue isn't switching to a new domain after the fact; bit.ly has all the data for all those links and could setup a new domain right away, but all the old bit.ly links are still embedded all across the web. Getting those changed is the hard part.
Or, Libya could go crazy, decide to fuck with the rest of the world, and have every bit.ly link redirect somewhere that will blow up IE, Firefox, Flash, Quicktime, and Reader.
Out of curiosity, is there any kind of list the risks various TLDs pose to businesses? Something similar to the US State Department travel warning list, for example (but including the US too)?
I ask b/c I recently bought a .co domain for a side project which will depend heavily on the domain similar to bit.ly, and my surface impression is that Columbia is stable enough for TLD risk not to be an issue. But there is the FARC, drug cartels, and probabaly some unknown unknowns as well, and this .ly issue is making me wonder if I should reconsider before irreversibly locking in this domain.
They can probably just do a find and replace for the entire internet :-)
I remember seeing that bit.ly and maybe tr.im had an "open" approach to URLs and formed some sort of service where they allowed anyone to easily replicate their URL database? I can't find any trace if it though, so I might have the wrong services, but that might be a possible solution, companies like Twitter could utilise that to "rescue" a large number of links.