Google can pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle privateness lawsuits

Google has agreed to pay the state of Texas $1.375 billion to settle two lawsuits accusing the corporate of monitoring customers’ private location, incognito searches, and voice and facial information with out their permission.

The lawsuits had been introduced by Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton in 2022. Fb’s guardian firm Meta agreed to pay the same quantity to settle a facial recognition-related lawsuit from Paxton final 12 months.

“In Texas, Massive Tech isn’t above the regulation,” Paxton mentioned in an announcement. “For years, Google secretly tracked individuals’s actions, personal searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry by means of their services. I fought again and gained.”

Paxton’s workplace additionally mentioned that is the “highest restoration nationwide towards Google for any legal professional normal’s enforcement of state privateness legal guidelines.”

A Google spokesperson mentioned the corporate is settling the lawsuits with none admission of wrongdoing or legal responsibility, and with out having to alter any of its merchandise.

“This settles a raft of previous claims, lots of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding product insurance policies we’ve lengthy since modified,” mentioned spokesperson José Castañeda in an announcement. “We’re happy to place them behind us, and we’ll proceed to construct sturdy privateness controls into our companies.”

Google gained some earlier victories in these fits, for instance with an appeals courtroom ruling that the corporate lacks enough ties to Texas to face a lawsuit there. The corporate had initially responding by saying Paxton mischaracterized its merchandise “in one other breathless lawsuit” — for instance, the corporate mentioned Google Images solely scanned customers’ faces with the intention to group comparable images collectively, and that it didn’t use the function for promoting.

The settlement comes after main antitrust rulings discovering that Google acted illegally to keep up monopolies in internet search and promoting tech, with proposed cures together with the divestment of Chrome. (Google has mentioned it would attraction each rulings.)

Paxton, in the meantime, not too long ago introduced that he’ll problem U.S. Senator John Cornyn in subsequent 12 months’s mid-term elections.