Huh? Bear with me.

We feel right at home back in our same spot here on the Slabs after our windy Borrego holiday. The sun… the Range… the bombs.

Bright blasts on the horizon were big last night, and close enough to thump the ground. But the blast took about nine and a half seconds to be heard. Quick, do the math.

Sound travels at the approximate speed of 1,100 feet per second. With blasts seen about 9.5 seconds before being heard that puts bombs just 10,450 feet away. Divide that by by 5,280 feet in a mile and you have very big bombs exploding 1.9791667 miles away. And what on earth does this have to do with Google, you ask?

In doing a simple search for the speed of sound and how many feet in a mile, I discovered that Google is indeed going to take over the world!

Before long, every web page visited will be tracked, logged, analyzed, stored, and marketed to accordingly in Googledom. With the search engine’s recent makeover, users have new powerful search and sorting options. They also have a responsibility to their own users for not passing encoded googlinks capable of tracking who knows what viewer history information. Which is exactly what you will do when simply right-clicking to copy an URL now from Google search result links. Check it out for yourself.

What do you think all this means?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=sw_smartlist_search_result_link&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CBoQswYwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftripawds.com%2F&ei=M26dS7T8FMH98Aa_842UDg&usg=AFQjCNHgne-o4U_dm4KmN-ADLp7kIoPMuA

So, that big bomb Google has dropped? No more absolute url copying for direct links to search results. Right click to copy a link and you now get a Googlurl encoded with plenty of tracking voodoo. What’s more disturbing yet? It was dropped by a stealth bomber…

It means this:

http://www.tripawds.com

Roll over any Google search result link and the browser status bar shows the actual url. At least Firefox does, on my Mac. And that’s pretty sneaky if you ask me. Not until a link is copied will the truth be told.

If you prefer to defy assimilation, here’s what to do: beneath Google search links a partial URL for the result is included in small green type, with no hyper link. Select that and copy if you don’t care to be part of the machine.

Apparently this has something to do with outbound SERPs. More like outright usurpers if you ask me. Check this Razzed blog for further Google outbound link tracking analysis. And try to pay attention where you’re sending people with your copied links. I sure will now.