I have more important things to do than to attempt to put together statistical proof of this to empiricism-fetishists, but I can see in 15 years of web development that I've seen this (including in a proper usability lab with one way glass and eye-tracking, bla bla bla) create serious confusion with users vainly attempting to click back and not understanding why it doesn't work. That is for the average non-tech user. For sophisticated users (which is probably approaching a majority of the American population under 40 these days) it just makes them angry when the behavior of regular pages is hijacked to be non-standard and disrupts their chosen workflow.
Are you seriously arguing that in your opinion every single link should open a new tab automatically?
I very much doubt that the majority of the American population under 40 are "sophisticated users". And no, browsing Facebook and twitter every day does not count. Especially this day and age full of tablets, smartphones and specific apps, people are unlearning how actual Web browsing works.
This said, personally I consider clicking on a link to an external resource/website to have a default behaviour of opening in a new tab. Failure of doing so counts as a usability bug to me. For same-site links then I agree, opening a new tab doesn't make sense.
There's nothing more frustrating than browsing with mouse only and being forced to go back and open a link with ctrl+click or middle click(also my mouse3 button is broken, but that's my problem)
Can't agree more, especially when external sites history jack and require digging in history because the back button hold you on their domain. I understand that the whole thing is really a matter ofpreference and will never have a correct answer, but for me, this is the right answer.
Are you seriously arguing that in your opinion every single link should open a new tab automatically?