[jeffbee]

You search for xyz and that goes into some online system with associated features like ip subnet or whatever. Then you load gmaps from the same subnet. It's not about "knowing who I am" it is just a distance metric in a hyperparameter space.

[antonyl]

Hmm. Good point; agreed it's likely just getting ingested by online system. I guess I would've thought that Google would drop non-logged-in requests from going into their online system, or that at least they would do so for incognito requests from their own browser. Haha. How naive I am!

[jeffbee]

Incognito, as is explained thoroughly on the new tab page, exists to stop the browser from leaving data on your computer.