In accordance with the settlement, Google will make its location tracking disclosures more transparent beginning in 2023. According to the attorneys general, this was the largest internet privacy settlement between U.S. states. It was the culmination of a four-year probe against the internet search giant’s actions from 2014 to 2020, which the attorneys general said breached consumer protection laws.
Google Agrees to Pay $392 Million in Location Tracking Case
Google stated that it had already rectified several of the settlement’s practices. “Consistent with the changes we’ve made over the last few years, we’ve settled this investigation, which was based on obsolete product policies we changed years ago,” said the company’s spokesperson José Castaeda. In the location privacy settlement, the state attorneys general said that Google misled consumers into believing that the business no longer gathered their geolocation data after they disabled location tracking services. However, Google kept accumulating and keeping a complex history of users’ travels through its vast array of other services, including search, maps, and apps that link to Wi-Fi and cellular phone towers. The attorneys general stated that until May 2018, Google even recorded the location of users who had checked out of Google apps, which might have misled consumers to assume that location tracking had been deactivated. Check out? Google Play Store Now Makes Your App Subscriptions Cheaper
