They've done this for well over a decade, I remember the transition and there was little outrage. Before, all the results generated were direct links without a

They've done this for well over a decade, I remember the transition and there was little outrage. Before, all the results generated were direct links without any wrappers. Then Google decided they needed to know which of the links people were clicking so they injected a wrapper around every link so they'd get a request from every click. Sure, it can be used to increase accuracy of search results. It can also be used to taylor data and profiles around individual users at finer and finer granularity.