Why would they want to give their work to a company that cuddled up to Twitter thanks to connections and took the entire market in a matter of months? I'd want some money out of that too.
I understood the bit.ly absorption to be more of a courtesy than an attempt to profit. Giving their redirects to a company that has the infrastructure and the long term support to keep them on-line, rather than just let them go dark, would be responsible and really wouldn't help bit.ly increase it's user base at all.
