The difference exists only to the point that Google is an ethical owner of the data. I'm concerned that Google is in the business selling products based on a monopoly of consumer data. These products are likely to become more and more invasive as time goes on.. It's possible that a future Google product will become a larger threat to privacy than geolocation because they have a wider variety of data collected.

In summary, today's Google handles geolocation much better than telecom companies, but the mass of personal data Google collects makes their potential future activity concerning.