There’s nothing that makes the location history issue only ‘technically true’. It is simply true.

If you present a switch saying don’t record location history, and still record the history, you are not respecting the switch.

Saying “That switch is just to turn off tracking the location history for the end user to use. We’re still going to track them for our own purposes.” is fine, but it’s a lie to say that the switch turns off location history. The switch should make it clear that all it’s doing is turning off the user facing version and that Google is going to keep tracking you whether you like it or not.

That would be honest, but presumably people wouldn’t like it if they knew, so Google wasn’t truthful about it.

The reporting is true, and Google deserves the consternation they are getting for misleading users.