Right now there is nothing here which wasn't published already a decade ago.
I downvoted your initial comment, but because I thought it was unhelpful rather than because I thought it was untrue. By contrast, I upvoted your more recent comment that mentions your expertise and defends your view with a useful link to decade old software.
Still, I'd guess that for many people outside your field, "would have been news" is not the same as with "published already a decade ago". I'd guess the majority are interested in what's currently achievable using off-the-shelf hardware and ready-to-run software, and aren't bothered that it may be weak in theoretical advances. Alternatively phrased, people may consider the performance and availability newsworthy even if the theory isn't cutting edge.
That said, I'm familiar with neither the state of the art nor the state of the theory. Are you saying that you could strap the same consumer camera rig to your head, take an unplanned stroll through a forest or city, and achieve the same model quality by running the resulting video through Bundler? If so, you would have a strong case that the parent article is accepting the hype of the press release a little too easily.
You nailed it. You could use pix4d, photoscan, bundler + pmvs, inpho, areohawk, etc many years ago to achieve exactly what this is showing. With wharever cameras you happen to have had at the time, strapped to whatever you feel like strapping it to.
The author of the article did not do due dilligence on the subject.
There were a bunch of other papers around the time.
I was downvoted a bunch here - which is odd as this really would have been news in 2005 when this would have been considered state of the art.
Right now there is nothing here which wasn't published already a decade ago.
Disclosure: I've been working on structure from motion software for the last decade.