This telemetry runs on the chip firmware and cannot be disabled by the operating system, kinda similar to Intel ME. I wonder if other Android SoC makers do the same thing?
I only have a phone with a Qualcomm SoC so I’ll have to block this domain izatcloud[.]net on my router, but you can try the method used in the article - monitor Wi-Fi using Wireshark - on Google Tensor (Pixel) or Samsung Exynos phones to see if these have a similar type of data collection.
Edit: There is far more nuance to this, please see my writeup: https://divestos.org/misc/gnss.txt
Why would a network location service have to collect user’s installed app list though?
Why is this news? This has been known for a while, at least I have been aware of this for years. And indeed what @SkewedZeppelin is saying this is for location services.
Edit:
Might be good also to add to this that some carriers cough T-Mobile cough replace these and Google’s GPS servers so that they get the data. Once again a good reminder not to buy or loan phones from them.