Google to pay Texas $1.375 billion in privacy case

Google has agreed to pay $1.375 billion in lawsuits filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the illegal collection of users' personal data, The Verge reports.

The cases stem from 2022 lawsuits that accused Google of tracking users' location, collecting data from incognito mode, and using biometric information without their consent. The prosecutor said that no other state had ever reached such a large settlement in a similar case — the previous record was $93 million.

"We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services," Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said.

In 2022, Google also agreed to pay $391.5 million in a settlement with 40 states over similar allegations. Incidentally, in 2024, Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas in a privacy case involving facial recognition technology and automatic photo tags.