The google.com/goto links feel like it makes it easier to send people to 'bad' sites. Having said that, I'm sure I'm in a tiny minority of people who check the link address in the bottom of the screen when hovering the mouse over the link.

I wonder if it also helps users to _not_ differentiate between an organic search result and an advertised link?

(is there such a thing as an 'organic' search result these days?)

Reg. goto links, as far as I remember, this has been in place for quite some time. and it only applies to sponsored links. The rest of the links remain unaffected by this..

But its been like that since many years, yup?

When you hover google link then it quickly replacea such link from genuine to via google under the hood

There are other search providers, they clearly don't want you scrapping, there is a search api.