Google Settles With AGs Over Location Tracking Claims

Google will pay $9.5 million to settle claims the company manipulated users to gain access to location data and made it “nearly impossible” for users to stop location tracking, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) announced in a settlement Friday.

Racine was one of four AGs to announce separate lawsuits against Google in January. He joined Texas AG Ken Paxton (R), Indiana's Todd Rokita (R) and Washington state's Bob Ferguson (D). Google will pay $20 million to settle Indiana’s claims, said Rokita. Ferguson’s case against Google is ongoing, his office told us Friday. Paxton’s office didn’t comment.

The complaints describe conduct dating back to at least 2014. Google told users they can turn off location history, but it continued to track location data through settings it didn’t adequately disclose, the AGs said. Racine claimed Google violated the city’s consumer protection laws by making it impossible to opt out of location tracking, deceiving users about their account settings, misleading Android users about their ability to adjust their privacy settings and deploying “dark patterns” to undermine user choice. The dark pattern activity included “repeatedly prompting users to enable location in certain apps and claiming products would not function properly if location was not enabled, when in fact location was not needed to even use the app,” said Racine.

A Google spokesperson on Friday pointed to the company’s comments related to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 state AGs in November (see 2211140051) concerning “outdated product policies that we changed years ago.” The company said it would be making “updates in the coming months to provide even greater controls and transparency over location data.”

As part of the settlement with Racine, Google will need to issue user notifications about how to disable certain location tracking, inform users about the location-related data collected, create a webpage with the necessary information about location tracking, help users more easily locate location controls and limit data sharing and retention. The company must also deliver annual compliance reports concerning the settlement agreement.

“Given the vast level of tracking and surveillance that technology companies can embed into their widely used products, it is only fair that consumers be informed of how important user data, including information about their every move, is gathered, tracked, and utilized by these companies,” said Racine.

He and Rokita noted the AGs began investigating the practices after a 2018 Associated Press report. Google “uses location data collected from Indiana consumers to build detailed user profiles and target ads, but Google has deceived and misled users about its practices since at least 2014,” said Rokita.