Google has agreed to pay $1.375 billion to the state of Texas to resolve two lawsuits over unauthorized tracking of user locations and biometric data collection without consent. This is one of the largest privacy settlements ever levied against a tech company by a single U.S. state.
The lawsuits, filed in 2022, alleged that Google collected geolocation data even when users had disabled the Location History feature and retained facial recognition data—such as voiceprints and facial geometry—without users' knowledge or approval.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton condemned the company’s practices, stating, “Google secretly tracked people’s movements, searches, and biometric identifiers for years.” He called the settlement “a major win for Texans’ privacy.”
This payout significantly exceeds previous fines paid by Google in similar cases. In 2022, it paid $391 million to a coalition of 40 states, followed by smaller settlements with Indiana, Washington, and California totaling over $120 million combined. The Texas settlement now matches a previous $1.4 billion fine paid by Meta in a similar biometric privacy case.
In response to growing pressure, Google has announced changes to its data policies, including storing Maps Timeline data locally on user devices and enhancing location data auto-deletion controls.
The settlement comes amid growing global scrutiny of Big Tech, with regulators in the U.S. and Europe considering more aggressive antitrust and data privacy enforcement against companies like Google.
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