Google no longer provides direct URLs in search results

Can someone explain why this matters? Not being flippant I just don’t understand why this would be important.

Direct URLs in Google search results have been replaced with redirect URLs in the form of www.google.com/goto?url=<opaque base64 string>.

The base64 data appears to consist of a very basic protobuf structure, containing a long string of bytes in field 2 which presumably identify the URL.

Sometimes, these redirect URLs take a perceivable amount of time to load, which is very irritating.

[delayed]

I use ChatGPT for almost all my searches now. I’m not joking.

The enshittification continues.

Nothing good ever comes from businesses desperately trying to protect their moats rather than making their products better so they don't need to.

If I hadn't already ditched Google long ago, this would be more than enough to chase me away.

I've been using the 'ClearURLs' FF addon for quite a while now, and it gives you the URLs back in the results.

https://docs.clearurls.xyz/