Google to pay Texas $1.4 billion over data privacy suit
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- Texas AG Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022 over claims that the company violated data privacy laws.
- The company agreed to pay Texas about $1.4 billion to settle two lawsuits, Paxton said.
- Google just lost a major antitrust case that could significantly change the shape of its business.
Google has agreed to settle a case as it deals with a government effort to break up its business.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement on Friday that the search engine giant agreed to pay the state of Texas $1.375 billion to settle two lawsuits accusing Google of violating data privacy and security laws.
"In 2022, Attorney General Paxton sued Google for unlawfully tracking and collecting users' private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data," the statement said. "After years of aggressive litigation, Attorney General Paxton agreed to settle Texas's data-privacy claims against Google for an amount that far surpasses any other state's claims for similar violations."
The settlement does not mean Google has admitted to any fault. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2024, Meta settled a similar lawsuit filed by Paxton that accused the company of illegally collecting people's personal biometric data. Meta agreed to pay the state $1.4 billion.
For Google's parent company, Alphabet, the settlement is just one of many legal headaches the tech giant has had to deal with over the past few years.
Last August, Google lost a landmark antitrust case that determined it had a monopoly on the search engine business. The company is now in the middle of a court battle with the Department of Justice to figure out what to do in light of the ruling. The DOJ wants the company to divest its Chrome web browser.
During the process of figuring out the legal remedies, an Apple executive testified on Wednesday that search volume on Apple's Safari browser, which has Google Search as the default engine, fell for the first time in more than 20 years due in part to AI, causing Alphabet's stock to plunge more than 8% on Wednesday.
Google said in response that the company continues to "enhance Search with new features" as overall search queries have grown.
In a separate antitrust case, a federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on advertising technology.
The company said that it plans to appeal the ruling.