Sure, they know but they're putting usability behind "accept us tracking everything" for anyone who has "opted out of tracking" several years ago. Basically they're turning off more and more usability so that they can get you to accept their tracking agreement.

They do this with btle as well, you have to turn on location services because they can't bother to randomize bluetooth tags (like apple) and want this setting on all the time.

And everything else. Each google maps client likely has an ID that is used to link each one back to your gmail. Regardless of whether you've signed in at time of map query.