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Wow, I've mostly converted to DuckDuckGo for the past two or so years, so are these "google assistant" style placements now part of their core product? or is this a setting that you've enabled?

If it's part of the core... Wow, what a useless cess pool google has become.

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Yes, those are default search results and the same content that drives Google Home's voice responses when you ask it a question. Originally Google stuck to Wikipedia/Knowledge Graph types of answers but have expanded this in recent months to try to answer just about any question you search, however dubious the answer's source.

I think it's part of the core, but I haven't tried to disable it before; that may be possible.

However, it is dependent upon the search query: https://www.google.com/search?q=flat+earth doesn't show it, for example.

Perhaps only queries in the form of a question show it.

But yes, it is a piece of shit and they should get rid of it if they aren't going to curate the kind of content that can get put in those boxes.

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