This is only about the Device manager integrated function which is really now a duplicate of Windows Update version.
With Windows Update I just have to believe that it'll look for drivers at some point. There's no direct feedback anymore.
I think you're conflating at least 2 other Windows features with the one removed.
Microsoft didn't get rid of the database of WHQL drivers that ship with Windows, they didn't get rid of the Windows Update mechanism for updating those drivers.
They got rid of the feature to search online for a driver when Plug-And-Play setup fails or when you manually go into the Device Manager and click the Update Driver button on a device.
The only time I've seen this feature kick in was when I plugged in a brand new GPU or random microcontroller board (e.g. Digispark). In either case it failed. I honestly don't recall the feature ever working.
It also helped me update some drivers that hadn't come in via Windows Update yet for some weird USB device, probably because it wasn't plugged in when the update process ran.
Are you specifically selecting that search option after it fails to install a driver? If you're just uninstalling the vendor provided drivers, removing the vendor drivers from disk, and redetecting the hardware then Windows might just be pulling a WHQL driver off disk that it already has.
Most Windows installs come with a cache of WHQL drivers for common devices, companies like Synaptics, Realtek, etc will provide a single driver that supports most of their devices. In rare cases where you have a device with limited storage (e.g. a cheap tablet) then it might not have those drivers, but that's not the norm.
It also takes away some of the power Microsoft had over hardware manufacturers regarding driver quality; the WHQL program has only improved driver quality in my experience. Of course companies like NVIDIA encourage you to use their website version that doesn't need to pass all the quality checks because it's faster, preferably by making you sign up and letting them track what you do on your computer with some of their spyware, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Microsoft-sanctioned drivers are usually much more reliable and secure than random downloads a vendor decides to throw on their website.
It also makes a lot of older hardware useless. Microsoft's database contains many more drivers for less common, cheaper brands than vendors' websites, especially when the devices in question is older than three years and they'd much rather have you buy a new laptop than give you a driver for the motherboard.
I too have been bitten by the random software popup when plugging in a "gaming" mouse from Logitech, but I think it's wrong to blame Microsoft for the shitty software their vendors throw online. Microsoft judges drivers on stability and code quality rather than weird features like side programs, so if Logitech asserts that their customers want to use the program to use all the drivers' features, then who are they to object?