[HelloImSteven]

Not saying it's right, but this is pretty standard practice -- it's likely mentioned in their privacy policy somewhere.

[zagrebian]

If I understand “total cookie protection” in Firefox correctly, this shouldn’t even be possible. When the website makes a request to Google, the user’s Google cookie is not included in the request, so Google does not know which user it is. All that Google can do is try to determine the user’s approximate location from their IP address.

edit: I asked Bard about this, and it told me that websites can get the approx. location of their visitors via the Google Geolocation API:

> To use the Google Geolocation API, a website must first obtain a Google Maps API key. Once they have a key, they can add the following code to their website:

    <script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_API_KEY"></script>
    <script>
      function getGeolocation() {
        var location = navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition();
        if (location) {
          var lat = location.latitude;
          var lng = location.longitude;
          // Do something with the location information.
        }
      }
    </script>