Hi @Qtnbln,
I’ve tested this. For qwant, links are opened in a new tab, but for google links are opened in the current window.
We can disable this in qwant. Go to https://www.qwant.com/settings and there you can disable Open outgoing links in a new tab
As far as I know, google does not have this setting (still looking).
Since you do say this happens in google AND other sites, do you have any extensions installed?