On March 11, 2025, the Google company logo is displayed above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City.
Gary Harshawn | Corbis News | Getty Images
Google Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday he agreed to pay Texas about $1.4 billion to resolve allegations of breaching the data privacy rights of state residents.
Paxton sued Google in 2022, allegedly illegally tracking and collecting user private data.
The Attorney General said the settlement covering claims in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant warned all past settlements by other Google states for similar data privacy violations.
The Google settlement comes almost 10 months after Paxton acquired the $1.4 billion settlement in Texas. MetaFacebook and Instagram parent companies resolve to resolve allegations of misuse of biometric data by users of these common social media platforms.
“In Texas, big technology doesn’t go beyond the law,” Paxton said in a statement Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their audio prints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” Paxton said.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a huge victory for Texans’ privacy and tells businesses that we will pay to abuse our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company has not acknowledged any fraud or liability in the settlement. This transaction covers allegations related to the Chrome browser’s secret settings, disclosures related to the location history of the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photos.
Castaneda also said Google was not required to make any changes to the product in connection with the settlement, and that all policy changes made by the company in connection with the claims have been previously announced or implemented.
“This settles many old claims, many of which have already been settled elsewhere and in regards to product policies that we have been changing for a long time,” Castaneda said.
“We are happy to have them behind us and we will continue to build robust privacy controls in our services.”
