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Google pays $1.4 billion to Texas to settle lawsuits claiming the company Collected User Data Without permission, state attorney general Ken Paxton said.
Paxton said the settlement would send a message that it would not allow tech companies to benefit from “selling our rights and freedoms.” He also said the deal is “a huge victory for Texans’ privacy and tells businesses that we will pay for abuse of our trust.”
“In Texas, big technology doesn’t go beyond the law,” Paxton said in a statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their audio prints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won.”
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Google pays $1.4 billion to Texas and settles a lawsuit claiming that the company has collected user data without permission. (Getty Images/Malena Sloth via Getty Images/Bloomberg)
This is the maximum amount that any state has won in a similar Google settlement. Data privacy violationssaid Paxton.
The agreement resolves several allegations Texas made against Google in a 2022 lawsuit over geographic, secret search and biometric data. The state alleged that Google illegally tracks and collects users’ private data.
Paxton claimed that the Tech giant had collected millions of biometric identification factors, including records of VoicePrints and Face Geometry, through applications such as Google Photos and Google Assistant.
The agreement resolves several allegations Texas made against Google in a 2022 lawsuit over geographic, secret search and biometric data. (via Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency Getty Images/Getty Images)
Google said the agreement resolves a variety of “old bills,” including those related to product policies that the company has already changed. The company said the settlement does not require any additional product changes.
“We are pleased to have them behind us. We will continue to build robust privacy controls in our services,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement to the Texas Tribune.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the settlement is “a huge victory for Texans’ privacy and tells businesses that we will pay by abusing our trust.” (Stefani Reynolds / AFP Get Getty Images / Getty Images)
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Texas had previously reached the other two Google’s settlement Within the last two years, the company agreed to pay $700 million in December 2023 and made several other concessions to resolve allegations that it had been curbing competition against the Android App Store.
Last year, Meta agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over allegations that the company used facial recognition software without user consent. The “suggestion tag” feature was particularly cited in the suit, as Facebook suggests that it performs photos uploaded to a website through facial recognition software and tag photos.
