Nonetheless, I actually don’t enjoy seeing my search history accumulate on my device. Half of my searches are just spell checks anyway, the next 40% are just wikipedia shortcuts. Probably less than one in ten searches are genuine queries, to scour for a real result.

The number is small enough that I pretty much can directly remember the thing I was thinking about, and why I searched for it. I don’t even want my device saving my recent searches.

Your preference is not very relevant for people that need to remember their searches though.

Let's not talk past each other. An app can remember preferences and searches locally, without synchronizing them to a central server. Requiring that the server remembers those searches only if you agree to having your activity tracked is a dark pattern.

Which is what we are talking about.

And this is very much still present in the latest version on my iPhone anyway. I still see a big prompt to turn on Web & App Activity I order to “Get the most from Maps” — which includes saving “Work” and “Home” favorites. Boo :-(

You don't see that prompt if you aren't signed in.

Son of a .... &%$!

This is about location search history in Google Maps, though, not general search history. Personally, I rarely need the latter but I find the former very useful.