I always look at the mouse over url. And check the URL in the address bar. And rely on the password manager in the browser. And sometimes login in a new tab, then go back and reload the link.

Thunderbird has phishing/scam detection built in that shows a pop-up with "this message might be a scam" if there is URL-like text in the message that points to another, different URL. So having the text "www.google.com" with a link to bit.ly would show a warning.

Sadly it is a bit overzealous and shows messages with say www.google.com that go to www.google.com/ as malicious too (i.e. trailing / so the text and URL don't exactly match though they resolve to the same thing), but the idea seems sound. I'm surprised gmail doesn't have something like this.