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.