At least in the EU, they run the (qualified) risk of a collosal statutory fine. It wouldn't be easy to get them audited (particularly in Ireland where the Data Protection Commission favours discretion over valour), and they'd have to actually get caught. Assuming that they didn't hide the evidence, and the auditors found it, and the necessary hoops were jumped, it could be financially and reputationally painful, even for big G.

If so, why believe "don't save location history" would mean anything either?

Difference being "don't save" would mean not being ingested at all; if it is sent to google, a stink could be made (perhaps by sniffing netreqs, looking at GPS requests, etc). Once it's in Google, us peons would have no way to verify any claim.

No. "don't save" does not mean "don't send to google".

All geolocation based on GSM cells and wifi sends your location continuously.

How can it be not ingested at all? If Google is giving me turn by turn directions it needs to know where I am.

Google maps vs tracking location at all times, though.

I believe according to their privacy policy and from past press statements deleting the data does trigger a real wipe of the data but I think there is a up to 30 day delay (not sure exactly) (wiping data from thousands of servers is actually kind of difficult).

If your threat level is NSA/nation state then this isn't good enough since they probably could get a copy before Google deletes it but it is probably enough to be useless for low level LE.