Google location-tracking lawsuit: Tech giant to pay $392 million to 40 states in settlement

Google has agreed to pay about $391.5 million as a settlement amount to 40 states over allegations that the company was tracking the users’ locations without their knowledge. The state attorney general announced it to be the largest multistate privacy settlement in the history of the USA.

All of this came after an investigation where officials found that the company tracked people’s locations even after they opted to refuse. William Tong, the Attorney General of Connecticut, said:

"This $391.5 million settlement is a historic win for consumers in an era of increasing reliance on technology. Location data is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information Google collects, and there are so many reasons why a consumer may opt-out of tracking,"

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Google broke consumer protections laws, as stated by authorities

As per the authorities, the company broke consumer-protection laws by misleading users and secretly recording their movements. At the same time, they then offered the data to digital marketers to sell ads, which is their primary source of revenue. Speaking about the matter, the attorney general also said:

"For years Google has prioritized profit over their users' privacy. They have been crafty and deceptive."

Many media houses have reported that Google services on Android devices and iPhones store data of the users’ location even if they set their privacy settings to not allow the information to be recorded. However, the conglomerate has said that the investigation was based on “outdated product policies” that they had already addressed.

Many reports from known media houses also stated that a coalition of attorneys general from multiple cities and states like Oregon, New York, Florida, Nebraska, etc., opened an investigation after the Associate Press filed a report in 2018 about how the company silently tracked the users’ location.

The report alleged that the conglomerate tricked the users into believing that their location had been turned off all these years, whereas they used to record each and every moment, and then use it for advertising and revenue generation.

Following the settlement, the tech giant will now be providing more detailed information about the data being tracked. At the same time, the company will also launch a new toggle to turn off or delete the location history in just a few clicks.

The multi-million dollar settlement came just after the tech giant paid $85 million to Arizona after facing allegations of how the company tricked users into believing that they had turned off location-tracking on their Android mobiles. Google has faced similar lawsuits from other states like Washington, Texas, and Indiana.

Speaking about the issue, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement:

“Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”

Furthermore, it is to be noted that Google made $111 billion just from advertising in the first half of the year. Many experts in the field believe that leaking the consumers’ locations is helping the advertisers make big bucks by making the ads more relevant and grabbing more customer attention.