cmd.exe vs. cmd output

Question

I am running Cygwin on Windows and occasionally I need to call cmd.exe from Bash.

However I have noticed that I am getting different results depending on how I call it

$ cmd.exe /c 'echo "http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2"'
"http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2"

$ cmd /c 'echo "http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2"'
\"http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2\"

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

I noticed if you call it like this it is closer to the cmd.exe output. Adding a space inside the quotes changes the output.

$ cmd /c echo 'http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2 '
"http://asdf.com?a=1&b=2 "

More information

one or more whitespace characters between the the two quote characters