Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

I wonder if this might have anything to do with that EU right to be forgotten thing. The EU would like Google to remove search results from google.com, which is obviously very undesirable for Google, so maybe they try to appease the EU by making google.com harder to access for Europeans? Maybe the Use Google.com link will be removed soon?

http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr

In Firefox you can assign a keyword to a bookmark. So when you bookmark this and assign keyword "g" then you can visit google.com by simply typing "g". Very convinient.

To give you some perspective: I live in Germany but prefer to read programming or scientific topics in English. My English is not so good but the amount and quality of English content counterbalances this by large. When using Google from Germany (google.de or google.com, doesn't matter what) looking for English search terms gives me subpar search results.

There is another reason for avoiding local Google search (google .com or google.de without ncr). From about October to mid December whenever I'm was not logged into Google I could only search when I OKed a popup to accept Google's terms. There was only an OK button so I could only search if I explicitly accepted their terms or logged in (I did neither). ncr avoided this problem. They stopped doing this but still nag with a big banner to accept their terms.

Just to be clear: I'm not complaining. I just think that most HN readers are not aware of this and some might prossible be interested to know how using Google another country feels like.

The only use case I have for Google search is localized search. For example: Yesterday I wanted to look up the ensemble of a local theater. There is nothing that can beat Google in this regard.