But I really want it to stop. I hate not being able to just "copy link address" off of the results page
The solutions that could be applied on Google side for this:
1. Perhaps they could add some button like on YouTube and other pages to share the search (be it web search, image search etc.). Of course it will clutter the UI but it's already cluttered and non-intuitive, especially given their experiments (AB testing?). Each few weeks I see something moved, changed, colors tweaked. Think what if Microsoft were doing sth like this with Windows or Office... :)
2. Use the History API to decrappify the URL after the load (it's a kind of cheat, but I would like it).
In some cases people don't need the URL in the browser, and don't need to open the actual page (or pdf document). Sometimes one need the URL itself - to send it via e-mail, copy into a command line, or anywhere else.
And in all of these cases it is a pure time waste - going to website (or starting PDF download), or cleaning up the URL, because google deceptively substituted it on a right-click. Or monkeying around with scripts that would prevent Google search from tracking clicks all-together.
And one more thing. Just like the original poster says: people hate not being able to just copy the URL. And every time somebody have to waste time cleaning it up, a little bit of hate towards Google sneaks in.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undirect/dohbiijnj...
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search...