Google will pay texas $ 1.4 million to resolve claims that the company collected users’ data without permission

Google He will pay $ 1.4 billion in Texas to resolve the claims that the company collected by users without permission, announced on Friday the State Attorney General.

Attorney General Ken Paxton described the settlement how to send a message to technology companies that will not allow them to make money with “selling our rights and freedoms”.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law.” Paxton said in a statement. “For years, Google secretly monitored people’s movements, private searches and even their voice imprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I struggled and won.”

The agreement resolves several claims that Texas made against the search giant by 2022 related to the searches for geolocation, unknowns and biometric data. The state argued that Google was “following illegally and collected private data from users.”

Paxton stated, for example, that Google collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voice printing and facial geometry records, through products and services such as Google Photos and Google Assistant.

Google spokesman José Castañeda said that the agreement resolves a series of “old statements”, some of which are related to the product policies that the company has already changed.

“We are pleased to put them behind and continue to build robust privacy controls on our services,” he said in a statement.

The company also clarified that the settlement does not require any new product change.

Paxton said that $ 1.4 billion is the largest amount gained by any state in an agreement with Google on this type of data privacy violations.

Texas previously reached two key settlements with Google for the past two years, including one in December 2023 in which the company agreed to pay $ 700 million And to make several other concessions to resolve the allegations that had been suffocating the competition against his App Store Android.

Meta has also agreed to $ 1.4 billion Texas settlement In a lawsuit of privacy on the complaints that the technological giant used the biometric data of users without their permission.