[vbezhenar]

> Your favorite search engine should just link to the content. Instead they link to a script that then forwards you to the content. This has all kinds of privacy implications as well as making it impossible to pass on for instance the link to a pdf document that you have found to a colleague because the link is unusable before you click it and after you click it you end up in a viewer.

I can copy Google link just fine.

[jacquesm]

Good for you. Now try it a number of times instead of just once and you'll see they insert their 'click count' script in there a very large fraction of the times.

Here is a sample:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Obtained by right clicking the link to the pdf and then 'copy link location'. What you see is not what is sent to your clipboard.