Google agrees to $1.4 billion settlement in two privacy lawsuits

Google logo outside a building

Google agrees to $1.4 billion settlement in two privacy lawsuits

 Google agreed on Friday to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle two lawsuits accusing it of violating the privacy of state residents by tracking their locations and searches, as well as collecting facial recognition information.

The state's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who secured the settlement, filed the lawsuits in 2022 under Texas' data privacy and deceptive business practices laws. Less than a year earlier, Paxton reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Google's settlement with Texas is the latest legal setback for the tech giant, according to a New York Times report seen by Al Arabiya Business.

Over the past two years, Google has lost a series of antitrust cases after being found to have a monopoly over its app store, search engine, and advertising technology. It has spent the past three weeks in the case involving its online search monopoly trying to fend off the US government's demand to break up its business.

"Big tech companies are not above the law," Paxton said in a statement.

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company had already changed its product policies, adding, "This closes a series of longstanding cases, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere."

Privacy has become a major source of tension between tech giants and regulators in recent years. In the absence of a federal privacy law, states such as Texas and Washington have passed laws to limit the collection of facial, voice, and other biometric data.

Google and Meta were among the most prominent companies challenged under these laws. Texas law requires companies to request permission before using features such as facial or voice recognition technologies. The law allows the state to impose fines of up to $25,000 for each violation.

The lawsuits filed under this law focused on Google Photos, which allows people to search for photos of a specific person; Google's Next Camera app, which can send alerts when it recognizes visitors at the door; and Google Assistant, a virtual assistant that can recognize the voices of up to six users and answer their questions.

Paxton filed a separate lawsuit accusing Google of misleading Texans by tracking their personal location data, even after they believed the feature had been disabled. He added a complaint to that lawsuit alleging that Google's private browsing setting, called Incognito mode, was not, in fact, private. These lawsuits were filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.