Google will pay $391.5 million to settle 40 states' allegations that the search and advertising giant has illegally tracked users' positions, the Michigan Attorney General's Office said on November 14.
The investigation and settlement, led by Oregon and Nebraska, is a legally headache for the tech giant from state chairmen who have taken a heavy attack on the company's user tracking activities in recent months.
In addition to this hundreds of millions of dollars in payment, Google will have to be more transparent with consumers about the time of location tracking and provide users with detailed information about location tracking data on a special website, the Iowa State Attorney General's Office, USA, said.
"When consumers decide not to share location data on their devices, they can be confident that a company will no longer track all their actions," Iowa CEO Tom Miller said in a statement. "This agreement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and comply with state and federal privacy laws."
Google said in a blog post on November 14 that it will "perform updates in the coming months to provide more control and transparency for location data".
Those changes include making location data easier to delete. New users will have automatic Delete controls that allow them to order Google to delete certain information when they reach a certain age.
State lawyers opened an investigation in 2018 after a report that Google had recorded location data even when users asked not to.
The survey shows that Google has been deceiving consumers about location tracking activities since at least 2014, violating consumer protection laws of US states.
Arizona filed a similar lawsuit against Google and settled the $85 million settlement in October 2022.
The states of Texas, Indiana, Washington and Columbia sued Google in January for location tracking and user privacy violations.
Google had $111 billion in advertising revenue in the first half of 2022, more than any other online advertising company.
