Google's search URLs have slowly been creeping up in length over years. Some of the parameters like hl are for user interface control (in this case, langauge).

Google's search URLs have slowly been creeping up in length over years. Some of the parameters like hl are for user interface control (in this case, langauge). Others like sourceid are for broad tracking of who's using Google how. And lately there are many more nonces mostly related to tracking individual users, Google+, instant search, etc. Many of those change based on who you are logged in as. Google is also responsible for all the utm_source spam in Feedburner and other tracked URLs. And they are the ones behind the #! / _escaped_fragment_ nonsense. Google's first search product worked so well mostly because it relied on standard URLs as unique pointers to web pages. It's a shame they're breaking URLs in so many ways now.