Google to pay Texas $1.4 billion in data privacy settlement
A Google company emblem hangs above the doorway to the corporate’s place of job at St. John’s Terminal in Untouched York Town on March 11, 2025.
Gary Hershorn | Corbis Information | Getty Pictures
Google yes to pay just about $1.4 billion to the condition of Texas to govern allegations of violating the knowledge privateness rights of condition citizens, Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton stated Friday.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully monitoring and amassing customers’ non-public knowledge.
The lawyer common stated the agreement, which covers allegations in two detached complaints in opposition to the hunt engine and app gigantic, dwarfed all while settlements by means of alternative states with Google for related knowledge privateness violations.
Google’s agreement comes just about 10 months upcoming Paxton acquired a $1.4 billion agreement for Texas from Meta, the mum or dad corporate of Fb and Instagram, to get to the bottom of claims of unauthorized significance of biometric knowledge by means of customers of the ones frequent social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton stated in a commentary on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” stated Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda stated the corporate didn’t admit any wrongdoing or legal responsibility within the agreement. The do business in covers allegations alike to the Chrome browser’s incognito surroundings, disclosures alike to location historical past at the Google Maps app, and biometric claims alike to Google Photograph.
Castaneda additionally stated Google does no longer need to manufacture any adjustments to merchandise in reference to the agreement and that all the coverage adjustments that the corporate made in reference to the allegations have been prior to now introduced or applied.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda stated.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”