Google Must Pay Out Almost $400 Million to States

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Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will have to pay out $391.5 million to 40 American states in a settlement over a lawsuit that accused the company of violating its customers’ privacy. The lawsuit stemmed from allegations that Google tracked users’ locations without their permission or even informing them that the company was doing so.

Have you noticed that lately every app asks specifically for permission to access your location when using it? They also ask if permission is being given “just this time” or whenever the app is in use. This is because of numerous new privacy laws enacted around the world that require full disclosure as to what an app does. This also applies to the cookies that websites “drop” in your browser. Nowadays they all ask first what, if any, they can use while you are on their website.

Google thought that tracking people’s locations was no big deal. After all, how else can its Google Maps app give someone directions on where to go or how can a Google search tell them where the nearest gas station or supermarket is.

But there is a lot more to it than that.

Google also sold information about people’s locations for advertising purposes, so that different companies would know where someone was in order to advertise to them. Different states, for example, have regional chains of stores and so forth so knowing if you are in Texas and not Illinois, and more pacifically Dallas, but not Houston, meant that Google could know which business to advertise to its users.

The State officials involved in the Google lawsuit were obviously pleased that the company was held responsible for what they charged was illicit activity.

For example, Connecticut attorney general William Tong said in a statement. “This $391.5m settlement is a historic win for consumers in an era of increasing reliance on technology. Location data is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information Google collects, and there are so many reasons why a consumer may opt-out of tracking.”

And Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said, “When consumers make the decision to not share location data on their devices, they should be able to trust that a company will no longer track their every move. This settlement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and abide by state and federal privacy laws.”

Alphabet-Google says that it has long since changed its policies and no longer tracks its customers without their consent.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement, “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”