updated Sept 5, 2016: looks like Don’t track me Google is now also available as a firefox extension, though for the time being i’m sticking with Google search link fix on Firefox.

updated Oct 19, 2014: rewritten to reflect existence of Google search link fix and Don't track me Google

google has been annoying the crap out of me in the last year or so by rewriting all the links in my search results to total gobbledygook with infinitely long custom google URL prefixes that have an escaped actual target URL tucked at the end. it’s gotten to the point of ridiculous if one needs to hire a cryptologist just to copy-paste a bloody link from google search results into an email!

my original solution in 2012 was to install the Straight Google Greasemonkey script, which seemed to follow all the breaking changes google introduces all the time rather closely.

nowadays the adblockers became good enough that i no longer see the need to bother with Greasemonkey in my browsers - other than for “Straight Google”, that is…

fortunately, since then a pair Firefox and Chrome extensions popped up that revert the google search result links to the way Tim Berners-Lee intended them:

<a sigh of relief>