Google Settles 40-State Location History Lawsuit, Pays $392M

Google settled its privacy lawsuit today with a coalition of 40 state attorneys general. Google agreed to pay $391.5 million for the misleading location history settings the company used from 2014 to 2020.

Google’s location history settings have caused issues with several regulators. The action came after a 2018 Associated Press article pointed out that the “Location History”checkbox does not control all of Google’s location history across your entire account and that many of the location tracking features are under a second checkbox called “Internet and App Activity “. Consumers may have turned off the Location History checkbox thinking it was stopping Google location tracking, but it was actually only for one Google Maps feature. Google lost a case in Australia over this in 2021 and recently settled a separate lawsuit with Arizonafor 85 million dollars. Lawsuits are still pending in several other states.

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• Modernization of user information centers. To explain how location data improves our services, we are adding additional disclosures to our Activity and Data & Privacy pages. We’re also building a single, comprehensive clearinghouse that highlights key location settings to help people make informed choices about their data.
• Easier deletion of location data: We will provide a new control that will allow users to easily turn off location history settings and app and web history, as well as delete their past data in one simple step. We will also continue to remove Location History data for users who have not recently added new Location History data to their account.
• Updated account setup: We’ll give users setting up new accounts a more in-depth explanation of what app and web history is, what information it includes, and how it helps them with their Google experience.

Ellen Rosenblum, Attorney General of Oregon, summed up the lawsuit by saying, “For years, Google has prioritized profit over the privacy of the people who use Google products and services. Consumers thought they had “turned off”their location-tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”

Google’s business model consists almost entirely of tracking people and using that data to serve relevant ads on the web. The company’s last annual report showed $282 billion in revenue, so over “years”of privacy violations, that $392 million settlement is about 12 hours of revenue.