How is it not in the same ballpark? It's the same data being quietly collected without consent from the same people for various vaguely articulated purposes and being kept for extended periods of time. How is this different? It's the same game, only the team colours have changed. In fact, it's plausible that the cell phone companies have a more legitimate interest in tracking location since understanding where devices are used is fundamental to their business of providing cell phone service. Furthermore, there are other implications to having location data cached on the phone since the border guards in a number of countries including the US are authorized to snoop on any devices they find. The phone company data would (at least theoretically) require some kind of court order.