Google has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle claims that the corporate collected customers’ information with out permission, the state’s lawyer common stated Friday.
Jeff Chiu/AP
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Jeff Chiu/AP
Google can pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle claims the corporate collected customers’ information with out permission, the state’s lawyer common introduced Friday.
Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton described the settlement as sending a message to tech corporations that he is not going to enable them to earn cash off of “promoting away our rights and freedoms.”
“In Texas, Huge Tech will not be above the regulation.” Paxton stated in a press release. “For years, Google secretly tracked folks’s actions, personal searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry via their services and products. I fought again and gained.”
The settlement settles a number of claims Texas made towards the search big in 2022 associated to geolocation, incognito searches and biometric information. The state argued Google was “unlawfully monitoring and accumulating customers’ personal information.”
Paxton claimed, for instance, that Google collected thousands and thousands of biometric identifiers, together with voiceprints and data of face geometry, via such services and products as Google Photographs and Google Assistant.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda stated the settlement settles an array of “previous claims,” a few of which relate to product insurance policies the corporate has already modified.
“We’re happy to place them behind us, and we’ll proceed to construct sturdy privateness controls into our providers,” he stated in a press release.
The corporate additionally clarified that the settlement doesn’t require any new product adjustments.
Paxton stated the $1.4 billion is the biggest quantity gained by any state in a settlement with Google over the sort of data-privacy violations.
Texas beforehand reached two different key settlements with Google throughout the final two years, together with one in December 2023 during which the corporate agreed to pay $700 million and make a number of different concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competitors towards its Android app retailer.
Meta has additionally agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas in a privateness lawsuit over allegations that the tech big used customers’ biometric information with out their permission.
