[jeff18]

Do you have any reason to believe that Google does this, despite Google publicly stating that they do not? I really doubt Google would stake the entire reputation of an already extraordinarily profitable company for the sake of the stupidest conspiracy ever.

I mean just think about it... How valuable is goo.gl to Google really? It will probably be used by a tiny fraction of users and at best would give Google a tiny bit of extra data on you. Absolutely nothing, compared to Google Analytics or most of the other Google products.

Now how much would it cost to run an air tight conspiracy and block all whistle blowers in a large corporation like Google? Note, even one verifiable leak would create a gigantic shit storm, probably knocking billions off of Google's market cap, not including lawsuits and fines.

I think I'm going to side with occam's razor on this one and say it's probably safe to use goo.gl.