From a comment on that issue page, dating a little over a decade ago:

> Shouldn't this be left to users to decide whether they want a feature or not.

Yes, those were good times. Nowadays, it's anathema to software vendors, and increasingly even to open source devs.

Another advertising revenue win for Query Jerry from marketing.

Not every browser vendor runs a search engine…

Apple and Mozilla aren’t Google. Apple runs their own searches on the App Store and iPhone, but Google pays them to be default. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t also index your search history in a more meaningful way other than perhaps space requirements.