Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:

> You probably have some data on this matter that I lack.

I read the Debian bug report someone linked to some messages back in this thread.

> Is this some
> systemd brain-damage you're referring to? Some file that gets consulted
> instead of /etc/resolv.conf ?

The current version of the system resolver has a hard coded fall-back - if you don't specify any resolvers then it will automatically use Google's (silently) !
Short version - a bug was raised, DD responded that it's important to protect people from having no DNS and rejected all criticisms. Security and privacy issues were rejected with "got any evidence". Can't remember what excuse was given as to why someone shouldn't be allowed to specify no resolvers.
Basically, it came down to - some people find themselves on a broken network (DHCP doesn't give resolvers) so we need to fix this for them. So the bug is "won't fix, it's not broken" :-/