Google agrees to pay $ 1.4 billion to settle 2 privacy cases

Google agreed to pay $ 1.4 billion to Texas on Friday to settle a lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy of the state’s population by tracking their sites and research operations, in addition to collecting face recognition information.

The state prosecutor, Ken Backston, who received the settlement, brought the cases in 2022 under Texas Laws on Data Performance and Decent Trade Practices. Less than a year ago, it reached a $ 1.4 billion settlement with Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, due to allegations that it has placed signs on the faces of users illegally on its site.

Google’s settlement is the latest legal setback for the technology giant. Over the past two years, Google has lost a series of anti -monopoly cases after it has found that it is monopolizing the application store, search engine and advertising technology. The past three weeks have spent the research case in an attempt to study the US government’s request to dismantle its work.

“Big technology is not above the law,” Mr. Paxon said in a statement.

Google spokesman Jose Castanida said the company had already changed its product policies. He said: “This settles on a set of old allegations, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere.”

Privacy issues have become a major source of tension between technology giants and organizers in recent years. In the absence of a federal privacy law, states such as Texas and Washington have passed laws to limit the collection of face, sound and other biometric data.

Google and Meta were the most famous companies that were challenged under these laws. Texas Law, called Picking or using the vital identifierCompanies require permission before using features such as face or audio recognition techniques. The law allows the state to impose damages of up to $ 25,000 per violation.

The lawsuit filed under this law focused on the application of Google photos, which allowed people to search for pictures of a specific person; The next camera of Google, which can send alerts when you admit visitors at the door; Google Assistant, a virtual assistant can learn up to six votes for users and answer their questions.

Mr. Buckston File a separate lawsuit Google was accused of misleading Texas by tracking their personal website data, even after they thought they had disabled this feature. A complaint added to that lawsuit, which claims that the preparation of private browsing from Google, which was called the mode, was not already special. These cases were placed under the deceptive Texas practices law.