Google agreed to pay Texas $1.4 billion on Friday, accusing him of violating the privacy of state residents by resolving two lawsuits, tracking locations and searches, and collecting facial recognition information.
State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who secured the settlement, filed a lawsuit in 2022 under Texas law relating to data privacy and deceptive trade practices. Less than a year later, he reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta.
Google's settlement is the latest legal setback for the tech giant. Over the past two years, Google has lost a series of antitrust cases as it turns out to be dominated by the App Store, search engines and ad technology. Over the past three weeks, search cases have been trying to counteract the US government's demands to dissolve the business.
“Big technology doesn't go beyond the law,” Paxton said in a statement.
Google spokesman José Castañeda said the company has already changed its product policy. “This settles many old claims, many of which have already been settled elsewhere,” he said.
Privacy issues have been the source of major tensions between tech giants and regulators in recent years. Without federal privacy laws, states such as Texas and Washington have passed laws to curb the collection of facial, voice and other biometric data.
Google and Meta are the best companies challenged under these laws. Texas law, known as capture or use of biometric identifiers, requires businesses to seek permission before using features such as facials or speech recognition technologies. By law, states can charge up to $25,000 in damages for each violation.
The lawsuit filed under that law focuses on the Google Photos app, allowing you to search for photos of specific people. Google's next camera can send alerts when it recognizes a visitor at the door. Google Assistant is a virtual assistant that can learn and answer questions from up to six users.
Even after he thought the feature was disabled, Paxton filed another lawsuit accusing Google of accusing the misleading Texans by tracking individual location data. He added complaints to the lawsuit, claiming that Google's private browsing settings (called Incognito Mode but was not actually private). These cases were filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
