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There is a Firefox extension that clears URL named, appropriately, ClearURLs :)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/clearurls/

So this is nice but doesn't do what I'm looking for, which is: given an email with links like OP's (https://www.google.com/...), go over it, follow each link to its final redirect and then replace the href with that (in this case, https://www.slashgear.com/...), letting me (for example) preview the links on mouse-over before clicking.

I thought it might be possible to build something like this with curl -Ls -w %{url_effective}, but seems like it only handles HTTP 302 redirects, whereas this site seems to be using Javascript, so you probably need a real crawler.

But do note that if such a thing existed, the actual resolution leaks information about your actions (the fact you are reading it / hovering, etc)

Not if it's done by the mail server in receipt of any email, even spam.

In my experience, it breaks any links with url encoded data in it (like links that redirect you to a login page, or contain an encoded hash)

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