United States: American tech giant Google will pay $93 million to settle a lawsuit for misleading consumers about the tracking and storage of their location information.
The settlement was announced by the California attorney general (AG), Mr. Rob Bonta.
The company has misled consumers into believing they had more control over their location information than they actually did.
“Our investigation revealed that 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. That’s unacceptable, and we’re holding Google accountable,” Mr. Bonta remarked.
Google has stated that if its “location history” option is turned off, the company will not track the user. But it “continued to collect and store that user’s location data through other sources” through a user’s “web and app activity” tracker, as per Mr. Bonda. The attorney general said it continues to be on by default.
The AG’s office also alleged that the tech giant “deceived users about their ability to opt out of advertisements targeted to their location.”
However, Google has not admitted any allegations, but the company agreed to several other conditions in addition to paying $93 million.
The terms include being more transparent about its location tracking and notifying users before location information is used to build ad profiles to target specific people. Getting approval from Google’s internal privacy working group before making any material changes to privacy is also included in the conditions.
This is not the first time Google has paid for allegations. The company reportedly agreed to pay $391 million to solve similar allegations by 40 US states in November 2022.
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