> That wouldn’t work at all with this url format - the url can only be resolved by requesting the goto link.
What is "that" you say wouldn't work?
The extension can work fine by requesting every goto link upfront. As far as your google searches go, this is just as private as before.
I would recommend you avoid judging a comment because of a metric it neither said nor implied.
Previously the clear target URL of a search result was added to the result-link (or div?) as an additional data-tag (aria or whatever, can't remember), and thus was able to be used with a userscript or similar to replace the Googleified tracking redirect link. And it was also part of the googliefied tracking URL, either way you were able to see the clear target URL.
That no longer is possible, you must ask google.com for consent to visit the result link before seeing what the final target URL is.
But the extension doesn't need to use that exact mechanism, and the person that linked it didn't mention specific mechanisms. The purpose of the extension is putting the real URLs back, and it can still do that.
And it can still prevent google from knowing which search results you click on, even though OP didn't mention that feature.
You can read the extension source, and description. It is obvious that what it does is strip url parameters and decode well known google encodings.
I said it can use a different mechanism. Why would I want to read the code for more details on the current mechanism?
If my mom had wheels she’d be a bicycle. The thread started with an offhand mention of an extension that doesn’t address the issue raised in the post and is in fact currently defeated by link redirects entirely.
We’ve had redirecting trackers like bit.ly for over a decade and the extension didn’t address it then.
But don't say "that wouldn't work" when you actually mean "it needs an update". It works on the old Google method, so even if it doesn't follow redirects on other sites, it could easily follow them on Google.
It's not your mom being a bike, it's a bike with flat tires being a bike.
I bet the reason it doesn't do redirects right now is that the situations you find redirects in have usually been places where investigating them loses privacy. But if these were fresh links already personal to your search, checking all the redirects is fully private.
> But the extension doesn't need to use that exact mechanism
How do you figure? How else could it possibly work now?
I said that in my first comment.
You do a google search. The extension resolves every link on the page immediately via the goto urls. This doesn't leak any information to google because they obviously know which links they sent you. Now the links are resolved and you can copy and click them and get clean URLs, without sending any information about which ones you're copying or clicking.
Isn't that the same mechanism as the one you were saying it didn't need to use, though?
> Isn't that the same mechanism as the one you were saying it didn't need to use, though?
In my second comment?
I was replying to a detailed explanation of the old mechanism that ended with "that is no longer possible", so I said "it doesn't need to use that exact mechanism" referring to the old mechanism.
It needs to update to the new way things work. But that's fine. An extension that performs the same task is still fully possible.