For bare URL (same text and URL), don't forget to surround text with ankle brackets. E.g.: [<https://google.com>](https://google.com). The result is more readable for users.
Actually, if you are just going to use the URL as the name of the link, you can just do <https://google.com> instead of encasing it in square brackets and in fact this is considered best practice in Markdown
(But also worth knowing that on Hive many of the front ends don't even care if you use <>'s and will make the URL clickable by itself)
It's good in mostly flavors but not all MD flavors. But you're right. My method more like a retro-compatibility.