I had a couple "similar" experiences. For a long time now, Google has been collecting data and building shadown profiles, but so far they never used their data

I had a couple "similar" experiences. For a long time now, Google has been collecting data and building shadown profiles, but so far they never used their data for ads. At least not in any apparent way. But recently, I noticed that even with my cookies deleted, Google "checks" to see if it's me with 2 major ways: one is IP and user-agent, and the other is queries/browsing preferences. If it figures out it's probably me, it switches to personalized mode. Of course it's one of the things you can't be certain about. I'm certainly not. I could be just my idea, but I think it might be happening.