Google has agreed to pay California $93 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the search engine company of deceiving customers over the tracking tactics it used to determine customers’ locations.
The charges that the Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) business misled individuals into believing that they maintained control over how Google acquired and used their data have been resolved due to the settlement announced on Thursday by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The state of California claimed that Google could “profile” users and target them with advertising even if they turned off the “Location History” setting on their devices. Additionally, the state claimed that Google misled users about their ability to block advertisements that they did not want to see.
The accord requires several steps to be taken to improve user privacy. One of these steps is for Google to give more information about how it tracks the whereabouts of people and what it does with the data it collects.
“Google was telling its users one thing–that it would no longer track their location once they opted out–but doing the opposite and continuing to track its users’ movements for its own commercial gain,” Bonta said. “Google was telling its users that it would no longer track their location once they opted out.” “You cannot get away with that.”
In reaching this agreement to settle the dispute, the Mountain View, California-based corporation did not admit wrongdoing.
During the first half of 2023, Google’s advertising business brought in $110.9 billion in revenue, equivalent to 81% of the company’s total revenue of $137.7 billion.
In November 2016, Google settled with forty states in the United States that required the company to pay $391.5 million.
Several states, including California, have taken legal action against Google. Additionally, the states of Arizona and Washington have been settled.
A spokesman for Google alluded to a blog post that discussed the multistate settlement in an email sent out on Thursday. The spokesman added that the issue was related to “outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
