- Google pays its largest state settlement ever over questions about data protection
- The company had tracked users’ geolocation without consent
- It also collected biometrics and incognito searches
Google has agreed to pay $ 1,375 billion to the State of Texas to settle litigation on unauthorized tracking and data collection.
It was considered that the company had illegally traced users’ geolocation, including while ‘location history’ was disabled.
Google had also collected biometric data, such as facial geometry and voice imprints, without consent, as well as tracing incognito searches and other private user activity.
Google needs to pay out $ 1.4 billion for unauthorized data collection
The colossal sum may not be much for a company that generated $ 350 billion in revenue in the recent financial year, but it is still an amount that could hit the company hard, marking the largest government settlement that Google has had to pay out of data protection problems.
In September 2023, Google paid off its then largest state settlement of $ 93 million over accusations of misleading users on how their location data was collected. Earlier in November 2022, the company decided a similar complaint about data collection in a payout worth $ 391 million, but it was to 40 states – not one.
“For years, Google secretly traces people’s movements, private searches and even their voice prints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Attorney General Ken Paxton, who declared that “Big Tech is not above the law.”
Google’s 10-figure settlement follows a similar payment from Meta in July 2024, when it was hosted $ 1.4 billion over illegal collection and use of face recognition data.
Paxton added: “This settlement of $ 1,375 billion is a big victory for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay to abuse our confidence.”
Told a google -spokesman Techradar Pro: “This is settling a number of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding product policies that we have changed for too long. We are happy to put them behind us and we will continue to build robust privacy controls in our services.”
