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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwyuCtbK3qw