Google to pay $1.4B to Texas over user data privacy violations

ISTANBUL

Google has agreed to pay approximately $1.4 billion to settle lawsuits brought by the state of Texas over alleged violations of user privacy, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday.

The lawsuits, filed in 2022, accused Google of collecting Texans’ data without consent, including tracking users’ locations, private searches—even in “Incognito” mode—and harvesting biometric identifiers like voiceprints and facial geometry.

Paxton called the $1.375 billion settlement a “major win for Texans’ privacy,” saying: “Big Tech is not above the law.” He said Google “secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry” through its services.

This marks the largest settlement by Google to a US state over privacy breaches.

It follows other major settlements by Texas, including a $700 million settlement with Google in 2023 over its “anticompetitive practices” and a $1.4 billion agreement with Meta in 2024 over biometric data collection.

In response, Google said the agreement resolves long-standing claims related to outdated practices that have already been addressed.

Company spokesperson Jose Castaneda said no new product changes are required under the settlement, and that the necessary disclosures and policy updates have already been made. "We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services,” he said, adding company admits no wrongdoing or legal liability as part of the settlement.