FWIW, there's an EU regulation coming that prevents companies from using data necessary for a product (like maps) to be used to improve a different product (like search).
I'd be interested to find out whether this works as intended. There's a good argument that maps is a subset of search. Most people don't open Google maps just to look at a map, they search the map for a place.
IIUC, maps would send your location to search if-and-only-if you make a search from inside maps, since that is necessary to do the precise location-based search.
