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.
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