Google Faster

README.md

Problem and Motivation

Google uses onmousedown="..." in-line javascript to track outgoing clicks on their search results page. Anchor tags (<a>) handle the onmousedown event before handling the href, so hijacking the user's intent is quite easy. This is usually a good thing, because Google uses clickthroughs to measure success of their search results, and the better Google is at getting me good search results, the happier I am.

But lately, I have been using a slower than usual internet connection when at home, and since apparently nobody at Google tests the usability of anything Google on a slower than 1T connection, they simply don't give a shit that SPDY sometimes breaks down for slow connections like mine. The solution? Pretend like I don't have javascript. This will let me click through with clean hrefs, like with normal links on normal websites. They should be measuring mouseovers anyway, not mousedown's.

Also, this will give you a little more privacy.

Instructions

1. Install Tampermonkey from the chrome web store.
2. Bring up the Tampermonkey preferences and create a new extension.
3. Paste in the javascript code above. You may want to trigger on insecure http://, too. Would not recommend matching mail.google.com, though. setInterval instead of setTimeout is a bit of overkill, but since there's no such thing as document.onchange, and Google instant is pretty great, setInterval is the only thing that gets the job done.
4. Save.
5. Reload your Google search. Command+Alt+i then click the magnifying glass, and then one of the search links, to show the DOM and ensure there is no onmousedown attribute. Not there? Great!

google-nomousedown.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name                Google Direct Links
// @namespace           http://blog.teusink.net/
// @description         Script that changes annoying new-style Google links to direct links
// @include             https://google.com/*
// @include             https://www.google.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

function removeMouseDowns() {
  //console.log('removing mousedowns from google results');
  var allElements = document.evaluate('//*[@onmousedown]',document,null,XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,null);
  for (var i = 0; i < allElements.snapshotLength; i++) {
    var thisElement = allElements.snapshotItem(i);
    if(thisElement.nodeName.toUpperCase() == 'A') {
      thisElement.removeAttribute('onmousedown');
    }
  }
}
setInterval(removeMouseDowns, 500);