Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that Google has signed the historic $1.375 billion settlement agreement with the State of Texas, marking the conclusion of two of the largest data privacy enforcement actions ever brought by a single state against the tech giant.
“This historic $1.375 billion price tag for Google’s misconduct sends a clear warning to all of Big Tech that I will take aggressive action against any company that misuses Texans’ data and violates their privacy,” said Paxton.
Paxton previously sued Google for unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito browsing activity, and biometric identifiers. The settlement obtained by Paxton for these combined abuses far eclipses that of any other one state’s settlement against Google for similar claims, with the largest single-state settlement to date outside of Texas being $93 million.
Additionally, a 40-state coalition secured $391 million in its privacy case against Google, which is almost one billion dollars less than what Paxton secured for Texas alone.
This settlement follows Paxton’s $1.4 billion settlement with Meta (formerly Facebook) for illegal biometric data collection and his $700 million and $8 million settlements with Google for anticompetitive and deceptive trade practices.