I guess they’ve been doing this for a few days (weeks?) now, but
it’s pissing me off so much that it’s compelled me to speak out …
Turn off the freaking URL masquerading!
If you don’t know what I mean, perform
any Google search,
then move your mouse over the first link result and check the bottom bar
that shows you the URL. Notice that you don’t see the expected;
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html
but instead you see;
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html&ei=wcohQ4iuGYuc-gGEua2HAw
One of my most common uses of Google is to do my search, then right-click
on the link result I’m looking for, do “Copy Link Location”, then paste
the URL into whatever I happen to be editing; a web page, a blog entry, a report,
whatever. Now I either have to dereference the URI and copy the
resulting URL in the browser bar – slowing me down while that happens – or
cut-and-paste the green partial URL (minus scheme) that the Google search
result also gives me – also slowing me down, as I have to highlight the text,
then paste it and prepend it with “http://”. Grrr..
Why do you forsake me, Google?
I think I’ll take this opportunity to give
Yahoo search
a try … erm, WTF?! They do it too?!
P.S. I wonder if
Nelson
had anything to do with this? 8-)
Update; interesting, I just noticed this; it’s only the first
result that is mangled. Hmm, looks like I’ll have to learn to craft my
searches such that what I want shows at #2 …
Next update; It looks like there’s
more to this
than meets the eye. Also, I’ve hacked together an
alternative Javascript solution
that Google could use.