1) So the backend can track you across fingerprinted links

2) So you can't know what's searched without getting tracked

You're the product, not the customer.

> Can google justify why are they doing this?

Look at Google's earnings reports and see what constitutes 80-90% of their revenues and profits

Remember AMP?

Baby steps and they’ll try again.

Google still uses amp on websites with a lot of ads... go figure that the king of ads dislikes some ads.

they don't have to! they remembered they control all browsers. much easier for the same goals they had with amp

Interesting observation: As soon as you right click on a link, it switches from that to https://www.google.com/url?...

It's to protect against scrapers that aren't running JavaScript. Makes it more costly for them.

they do that because they added this dark pattern on gmail almost two decades ago and absolutely nobody ever complained.

why wouldn't they expand it?