If you print a web page the links are still there. The icon tells you "this here was a link" and you can go to the computer and look it up. If the link wasn't underlined and had a different colour but you printed in b&w it might be the only way to know that was a link, so I would argue that the icon is more useful in paper than on a live web, actually.

References can also be used in paper?

I wonder why there are actually so many people ITT who argue this new symbol would have no use and no meaning in print...

Even assuming that symbols you click on can't be in unicode, you don't click on the external link symbol, you click on the text of the link, and that text will be followed by the symbol. Even if you include the symbol in the link text, it's still part of the text both logically and in practice.

But this particular symbol just lost his meaning when printed. You don't expect to click on a paper, right?

Couldn't the URL be the print representation of the link symbol? Text can be represented differently in different media.