Google to pay Texas nearly $1.4 billion over alleged data privacy violations

Google has agreed to pay Texas more than $1.37 billion to resolve two lawsuits involving its use of location data, biometrics and its Incognito search engine.

The payout far outstrips any other state settlements against the tech giant to date on claims involving data privacy.

Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022, alleging the company illegally tracked and collected users’ private data, including their location, their voiceprints and faces and their searches in Incognito mode. The latter has been the subject of other lawsuits claiming the special search engine does not deliver the privacy it promises.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement, which accused Google of “secretly” tracking Texans’ data. 

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.” 

A Google spokesperson noted that the settlement reached on Friday does not mandate new product changes and said the company has already made policy fixes which address the issues at the heart of the lawsuit.

The settlement also includes no admission of wrongdoing by Google, the spokesperson said.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” said José Castañeda, a company spokesperson.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.” 

It is unclear how Texas will use the money it is owed.

Paxton has been at the cutting edge of attorneys general enforcing data privacy nationally and is currently suing the insurance company Allstate for creating an in-house data broker which allegedly sells motorists’ driving data to insurers.

The attorney general also secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta in July relating to its use of facial recognition data.