A Google company brand hangs above the doorway to the corporate’s workplace at St. John’s Terminal in New York Metropolis on March 11, 2025.
Gary Hershorn | Corbis Information | Getty Photos
Google agreed to pay practically $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the information privateness rights of state residents, Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton stated Friday.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully monitoring and gathering the personal information of customers.
The legal professional basic stated the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits in opposition to the search engine and app large, dwarfed all previous settlements by different states with Google for related information privateness violations.
Google’s settlement comes practically 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the dad or mum firm of Fb and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric information by customers of these in style social media platforms.
“In Texas, Massive Tech isn’t above the legislation,” Paxton stated in an announcement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked folks’s actions, personal searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry by means of their services and products. I fought again and received,” stated Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a significant win for Texans’ privateness and tells firms that they may pay for abusing our belief.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda stated the corporate didn’t admit any wrongdoing or legal responsibility within the settlement, which entails allegations associated to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures associated to location historical past on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims associated to Google Photograph.
Castaneda stated Google doesn’t need to make any adjustments to merchandise in reference to the settlement and that the entire coverage adjustments that the corporate made in reference to the allegations have been beforehand introduced or applied.
“This settles a raft of previous claims, lots of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding product insurance policies we now have lengthy since modified,” Castaneda stated.
“We’re happy to place them behind us, and we’ll proceed to construct sturdy privateness controls into our companies.”