Google Pays Texas $1.4 Billion in Privacy Settlement
Google has agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with the state of Texas, resolving two lawsuits alleging unauthorized tracking of user data. The lawsuits, filed in 2022 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, accused Google of tracking users' location, incognito searches, voice data, and facial geometry without consent.
This settlement follows a similar agreement between Texas and Meta, Facebook's parent company, over facial recognition practices.
In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law. For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry. I fought back and won.
The quote above is attributed to Attorney General Ken Paxton from his official statement.
This settlement represents the largest recovery by any state attorney general against Google for privacy law violations.
Google maintains it admits no wrongdoing and is settling to resolve outdated claims related to past product policies. A spokesperson stated the company has since implemented robust privacy controls.
This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed. We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.
The quote above is from Google spokesperson José Castañeda.
Prior to the settlement, Google achieved some legal victories, including an appeals court ruling questioning Texas's jurisdiction. The company initially argued that Paxton misrepresented its products.
This settlement comes amidst ongoing antitrust scrutiny of Google's dominance in web search and advertising technology. Recent rulings have found Google acted illegally to maintain monopolies, potentially leading to the divestment of Chrome, decisions Google plans to appeal.
Attorney General Paxton is planning to challenge U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the upcoming midterm elections.
