Thanks for this. I somehow ended up with 2 Google accounts, and when I logged in to each and tried to clear history, I was surprised to get a screen with a button saying, "turn web history on."

Btw, a friend steered me to https://startpage.com/eng/ and I've been using that instead of Google ever since. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but I don't really care. I'd rather have more privacy, and get search results that aren't ads masquerading as search results.