- Google agreed to pay $391.5 million settle accusations of misleading location tracking practices, reported the New York Times.
- The settlement marks the end of a four-year investigation into Google's violation of consumer protection laws.
Google will pay $391.5 million to a settle a lawsuit that accused the company of collecting user location data after the search engine allegedly deceived users into thinking their data was no longer collected when they turned off its location-tracking services, the New York Times reported on Monday.
The settlement reportedly claimed that Google didn't make it clear that it continued to track location data on services like search, maps and apps that require Wi-Fi connection and cell phone towers to sell targeted ads, highlighting concerns over how big tech companies are using data to surveil users for profit.
Google has not admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
The agreement was the largest internet privacy settlement among US states, a group of attorneys general involved in the 40-state case told the Times, ending a four-year investigation into the search engine's alleged violation of consumer protection laws across the country.
The investigation started after the Associated Press published a story in 2018 on Google's deceptive location-tracking methods, sparking lawsuits in states like Indiana, Texas and Washington state.
This decision comes just months after Google announced that will introduce privacy changes to Android's ad tracking practices which the VP of Android product management Anthony Chavez wrote would "limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers," Insider reported.
The accusations also comes in the wake of an ongoing debate between Democrats and Republicans on how far federal privacy laws should go to limit businesses like Google from collecting personal user data.
Google, in particular, collects user geolocation data and uses it to sell targeted ads which can be beneficial for retailers to sell their products. But even though companies like Google have said that the data collected is anonymized, privacy groups worry that geolocation tracking can reveal the personal identity of users, reported the Times.
In October, Google settled a similar $85 million lawsuit with the state of Arizona.
In 2019, Google and Youtube were hit with a $170 million settlement after the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General sued the companies on allegations of illegally collecting data from children on their video watching habits without asking their parents for permission.
Google didn't respond to Insider's request for comment ahead of publication.