Google consents to pay Texas $1.4 billion knowledge privateness agreement

Google indubitably to pay just about $1.4 billion to the situation of Texas to govern allegations of violating knowledge privateness rights of the situation’s citizens, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton mentioned Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully monitoring and gathering the personal knowledge of customers.

The legal professional basic mentioned the agreement, which covers allegations in two distant complaints towards the quest engine and app vast, dwarfed all year settlements by way of alternative states with Google for alike knowledge privateness violations.

Google’s agreement comes just about 10 months next the legal professional acquired a $1.4 billion agreement for Texas from Meta, the father or mother corporate of Fb and Instagram, to unravel claims of unauthorized importance of biometric knowledge by way of customers of the ones prevailing social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton mentioned in a commentary on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” mentioned Paxton. “This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda mentioned the corporate didn’t admit any wrongdoing or legal responsibility within the agreement, which comes to allegations homogeneous to the Chrome browser’s incognito atmosphere, disclosures homogeneous to location historical past at the Google Maps app, and biometric claims homogeneous to Google Photograph.

Castaneda mentioned Google does now not need to build any adjustments to merchandise in reference to the agreement and that all the coverage adjustments that the corporate made in reference to the allegations had been up to now introduced or carried out.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda mentioned.

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

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