An agreement in principle on two consumer privacy suits brought by the Texas Attorney General’s office would settle the complaints for a total of $1.375 billion, according to state AG Ken Paxton. The suits broadly involve surreptitious tracking of users via several methods and products in recent years, including alleged undisclosed company use of biometrics.
Google may finally settle consumer privacy tabs in Texas
Google spokesperson José Castañeda indicated in a statement that the company intends to proceed with paying the settlement amount, saying that it puts to rest a “raft” of “old” consumer privacy claims against the company. He also stated that it plans to build improved privacy controls into its services going forward, though the settlement does not mandate any changes to its products or practices.
The two suits were filed over alleged violation of Texas consumer protection laws, and collectively involve several different Google products and tracking methods. The general theme is that users were intentionally misled about the privacy level of Incognito Mode and other privacy settings, and that the company improperly collected voiceprints and facial biometrics without obtaining the informed consent required by state law.
The settlement sets a national record for payments issued in response to consumer privacy suits, blowing past a $391 million tally gathered by a 40-state coalition of AGs in late 2022 and a $93 million settlement obtained in California in 2023. Both of those cases involved Google’s alleged improper transparency about and consent collection for location tracking.
One component of the suits was the Texas “Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier” law, rare among state consumer privacy laws in putting strong consent requirements on the collection of any face or voice markers. This law provides for fines of up to $25,000 per violation, something that could have seen Google paying a much higher price should a court decision have gone against it. The suit took issue with the capability of Google Photos and Google’s Ring competitor Next in implementing technology to automatically identify the people seen in images (dating back as far as 2015), and the Google Assistant feature that has it learn the patterns and nuances of a user’s voice in order to better answer their questions.
The data tracking aspect of the suit primarily focused on Google Chrome’s “Incognito” mode, which has faced a barrage of similar legal trouble elsewhere. As with other regulatory actions, the suit pointed out that Incognito made it appear as if users would not be tracked at all while on the internet but did not sufficiently mention that Google’s own advertising and other services would still continue to collect data on them. Google has previously contended, unsuccessfully, that users should be aware that the setting applies only to third parties and not to its own first-party ecosystem.
Texas AG: “Big tech is not above the law”
Attorney General Paxton has made consumer privacy suits a focus of his tenure in the Texas AG office, which has now lasted for 10 years. He has previously reached settlements with Google over anticompetitive and deceptive trade practices, though those were for smaller amounts ($700 million and $8 million in two separate cases). Paxton reached a similarly large consumer privacy settlement with Meta in 2024, a total of $1.4 billion in another case that involved inappropriate use of facial biometric data in violation of the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier terms. Paxton has also ranged beyond the bounds of big tech firms, hitting major insurer Allstate (along with subsidiary Arity) for unlawfully accessing driving data in violation of the state’s laws governing data brokers.
Though the settlement is a record for states, it is also not a severe blow to a company that currently rakes in about $360 billion per year and continues to grow at a pace of about 13% per year. The company has sunk a good deal of money into building data centers in Texas in recent years, spending about $2.7 billion on an existing facility in Midlothian and one that is slated to begin construction soon in Red Oak.
Paxton himself has faced a variety of criticism, including weathering a number of civil and criminal charges. The most serious of these, a charge of official corruption, was dropped by the Justice Department in early April and appears to have given the greenlight to advancement of his political career; there is a good deal of speculation that he will challenge Senator John Cornyn for his seat in 2026. Paxton himself settled a case of alleged felony securities fraud in 2024 by agreeing to accept 100 hours of community service, 15 hours of legal ethics courses and payment $271,000 in restitution to victims in real estate dealings he was involved with in 2010.
