> Disabling Location History and not using Maps or other Google location based apps or APIs means they won't get your location.
Which is impossible unless you don't use the phone at all, hence the 3 hour long congressional hearing[1]. Turn off location history, turn off location services, it doesn't matter, your location tracks are being logged.
I'm not sure what you're trying to argue about since you seem agree with the premise. You think the news outlets exaggerated the fact that Google grossly underplayed the language around their always-on tracking and mislead hundreds of millions of users into thinking they're not being tracked when they in fact were? Okay then.