This has been well-known for a while, so the story itself isn’t news.
(The fact that congress called them in to testify is news, since it means maybe some politicians are going to make noises about how unacceptable this is, or perhaps even introduce a bill.)
It's not new news to me, but having a Google exec publically admit should be bigger news, in my opinion. In the testimony [0] he also positions Google's location service as something that's required for the phone to function and even make calls, which is untrue. Being a lawyer and apparently on Google's privacy counsel for a decade this may've been a disclosure on how deep the data-mining goes. These are the sort of details that should be pulled out and scrutinized by the media.
Unfortunately most of these news publications rely on things like Google's YT + Adsense for content distribution and revenue, so they may not want to anger their overlords. I also doubt anything will come out of this hearing -- people don't seem to care about privacy and they want convenience. Although this senator understands the privacy concerns, most of his peers are clueless.
(The fact that congress called them in to testify is news, since it means maybe some politicians are going to make noises about how unacceptable this is, or perhaps even introduce a bill.)