Google will pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle privacy lawsuits

Google has agreed to wage the authorities of Texas $1.375 cardinal to settee 2 lawsuits accusing the institution of tracking users’ idiosyncratic location, incognito searches, and dependable and facial information without their permission.

The lawsuits were brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton successful 2022. Facebook’s genitor institution Meta agreed to wage a akin amount to settee a facial recognition-related suit from Paxton past year.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not supra the law,” Paxton said successful a statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, backstage searches, and adjacent their voiceprints and facial geometry done their products and services. I fought backmost and won.”

Paxton’s bureau besides said this is the “highest betterment nationwide against Google for immoderate lawyer general’s enforcement of authorities privateness laws.”

A Google spokesperson said the institution is settling the lawsuits without immoderate admittance of wrongdoing oregon liability, and without having to alteration immoderate of its products.

“This settles a raft of aged claims, galore of which person already been resolved elsewhere, concerning merchandise policies we person agelong since changed,” said spokesperson José Castañeda successful a statement. “We are pleased to enactment them down us, and we volition proceed to physique robust privateness controls into our services.”

Google won immoderate earlier victories successful these suits, for illustration with an appeals tribunal ruling that the institution lacks capable ties to Texas to look a suit there. The institution had initially responding by saying Paxton mischaracterized its products “in different breathless lawsuit” — for example, the institution said Google Photos lone scanned users’ faces successful bid to radical akin photos together, and that it did not usage the diagnostic for advertising.

The colony comes aft large antitrust rulings uncovering that Google acted illegally to support monopolies successful web search and advertising tech, with projected remedies including the divestment of Chrome. (Google has said it volition entreaty some rulings.)

Paxton, meanwhile, precocious announced that helium volition challenge U.S. Senator John Cornyn successful adjacent year’s mid-term elections.