Ha, the Hacker News page won't even display the URL, it's so ugly. Let's examine it in its full glory

https://www.google.com/url?

sa=t&

rct=j&

q=&

esrc=s&

source=web&

cd=1&

cad=rja&

ved=0CDMQFjAA&

url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F&

ei=k99eUcfzOsePiAKjgIG4DA&

usg=AFQjCNGxnV8qCnv_rujodDj6o2ZhqU8Nxg&

bvm=bv.44770516,d.cGE

Note that none of this is necessary for clickthrough tracking; it's easy to do that separately from the href.