Google to Pay Texas $1.375 Billion in Record Privacy Settlement

Highlights

Texas secures a historic $1.375 billion privacy settlement from Google over claims involving location tracking and biometric data use.

Google has agreed to pay a massive $1.375 billion to settle privacy violation claims brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, marking the largest such settlement ever secured by a single U.S. state against the tech giant.

The settlement stems from two lawsuits filed by Texas in 2022, accusing Google of “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data,” according to an official press release. Prior to this, no state had achieved a data privacy settlement with Google exceeding $93 million.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda told a famous publication. “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

This isn’t the first major privacy case involving Google. In 2022, the company agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states over allegations of unauthorised location tracking. Additionally, Meta faced a similar reckoning, settling for $1.4 billion with Texas last year over its facial recognition practices. Texas continues to position itself as a leading enforcer of digital privacy rights in the U.S.