[k_sze]

The cynic side of me thinks Google has figured this out:

- search history of more than 3 months ago is somewhat worthless for analytics/advertisement purposes;

- search history of more than 18 months ago is really worthless, but hey, we can also keep those just because we can.

[natslovR]

fortunately they are just changing defaults. I worried i was losing all my location history, but just checked and it's still set to never delete.

[dhsysusbsjsi]

I came here to write this exact comment but you beat me to it. They have just figured out that 18 months of your data is all they need to make you a monetisable product.