The reason Google sends you through a redirect instead of directly to the site is to prevent those sites from tracking what you searched to get there. When websites look in their referrer header they'll see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rc...url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample... instead of "https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=example".

This gives them the advantage of you only being able to see what Google Searches brought people to their site through Google Analytics.