If the whole purpose of these changes was to hide the search term from website owners, then turning on SSL everywhere wouldn't be required at all. That was alre

If the whole purpose of these changes was to hide the search term from website owners, then turning on SSL everywhere wouldn't be required at all. That was already accomplished with the redirection between the SERP page and the clicked link, which was put in place before SSL was turned on everywhere. There are other purposes. Like preventing governments from recording your long-term search history without a warrant. Frustrating that purpose requires SSL but doesn't require wiping the search term from the referrer as well. It would never be transmitted across an encrypted->unencrypted connection transition per the HTTP spec.