Google has agreed to pay $1.375 billion to settle data privacy violation claims brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, marking the largest-ever state-level settlement over such issues.
The lawsuits, filed in 2022, accused Google of unlawfully tracking users’ geolocation, collecting data from incognito searches, and capturing biometric information without proper consent.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
The settlement surpasses all previous individual state agreements with Google, including a $93 million deal with California. It also follows Google’s 2022 multistate agreement of $391.5 million over location tracking issues and comes shortly after Meta’s $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over facial recognition practices.
Texas officials say this move sends a clear message about protecting citizens’ digital privacy, particularly when Big Tech’s data handling is under growing scrutiny.
