• P (unregistered)

    Classic Frist

  • bvs23bkv33 (unregistered)

    i wonder why they called that "followLink"? they could just overload goto

  • (nodebb)

    The classic problem is to keep the 'greyed out' appearance glitchlessly while loading the next page.

  • Feeling lucky (unregistered)

    At least this protects evil Adblocker/Greasmonkey geniuses to follow a link untracked! Also it is the best way to not spill the own SEO ranking by promoting others via links .. oh, wait ..

  • Dan Sommers (unregistered)

    And today, in Web N+1.0, following a link involves Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, DoubleClick, and uncounted other advertising underbelly companies who don't want you to know about them. If only we could go back to those simpler times....

  • Fryingfenix (unregistered)

    Thw worst part is that while that was bad years ago, today it is as bad or even worse. The proliferation of trackers, redirectors, shorteners, sometimes chained end-to-end multiple times, plus the needless use of javascript-based "bling" (with dozens of web-based libraries of varying quality each with its own dependencies) turns something like following a link that should be nearly instantaneous and straightforward into a multi-megabyte, multi-second experience.

  • Qazwsx (unregistered)

    I don't get it. What's wrong with this method? -- Jeff Atwood

  • Appalled (unregistered)

    It appears that WTF has morphed into WABI, a "What a bright idea" page.

  • DirtyBird (unregistered)

    This would be more amusing if this wasn't basically similar to what google does with all its search engine links. You should realize that google removed the actual site URL from their search result a while back. Now, the "link" you are presented is a internal google link that then redirects you to the actual site after of course, collecting some traffic and usage information that they tie to your connection.

  • M. M. (unregistered)

    I saw this pattern in use years ago -- on a site with tips on how to make web pages more accessible.

  • John Alexiou (unregistered)

    I have the feeling that att.com still works the same way. Every hyperlink click is followed by at least 3 layers of 'working ...:" and busy work in the background.

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