Google has agreed a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to investigate how the company tracks users’ locations. The state’s attorney general announced the agreement on November 14, 2022, calling it the largest multistate secrecy settlement in US history. , photo credit: AP
The Michigan Attorney General’s office said on November 14 that Alphabet’s Google will pay $391.5 million to settle allegations by 40 states that the search and advertising giant illegally tracked users’ locations.
The investigation and settlement, which was led by Oregon and Nebraska, is a sign of a growing legal headache for the tech giant’s state attorney general, who has aggressively targeted the firm’s user tracking practices in recent months.
The Iowa attorney general’s office said that in addition to payments, Google should be more transparent with consumers about when location tracking is taking place and give users detailed information about location-tracking data on a specific Web page.
“When consumers decide not to share location data on their devices, they can be confident that a company will no longer track their every move,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “This settlement makes it clear that the companies must be transparent about how they track customers and comply with state and federal privacy laws.”
Arizona filed a similar case against Google and settled it for $85 million in October 2022.
Texas, Indiana, Washington state and the District of Columbia sued Google in January over what they called deceptive location-tracking practices that invaded users’ privacy.
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said: “In line with the improvements we’ve made in recent years, we’ve resolved this investigation that was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
Google received $111 billion in advertising revenue in the first half of this year, more than any other seller of online ads. A consumer’s location is important in helping an advertiser cut through the digital clutter in order to make advertising more relevant and capture the consumer’s attention.