Google Texas will pay $ 1.4 billion to settle privacy claims

Google agreed to pay the state of Texas 1.375 billion dollars to settle lawsuits accusing a company that tracks the personal site of users, hidden search operations, and audio and face data without their permission.

The lawsuits were submitted by the Public Prosecutor of Texas Ken Pakston in 2022. The parent company, Facebook Meta agreed to pay a similar amount To settle a case related to face recognition from Backstone last year.

Buckston said in statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, special research operations, even their audio and facial engineering through their products and services. I have fought and won.”

The Pakston office also said that this is “the highest recovery in the country against Google for any prosecutor to enforce the state privacy laws.”

A Google spokesman said that the company is settling lawsuits without any recognition of error or responsibility, and without the need to change any of its products.

“This settles on a set of old allegations, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, regarding the policies of the product that has changed us for a long time,” said Castaida spokesman Jose Castaida in a statement. “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build strong privacy controls in our services.”

Google won some of the previous victories in these cases, for example, with the Court of Appeal of this The company lacks sufficient relationships with Texas To face a suit there. The company was initially responding by saying Buckston offended its products “In another brutal lawsuit” – for example, the company said that Google’s photos have just wiped the faces of users to collect similar images together, and that it did not use the feature to advertise.

The settlement comes after the main monopoly rulings have found that Google acted illegally to maintain monopolies in Search on the Internet and Advertising technologyWith proposed treatments including chromium stripping. (Google said it would appeal both rulings.)

Buckston, at the same time, recently announced that he will American Senator John Corn In the mid -year elections.