California settles with Google over location privacy practices for USD 93 million

Oakland: Search giant Google has agreed to a USD 93 million settlement with the state of California on Thursday over its location-privacy practices.

The settlement follows a USD 391.5 million settlement with 40 states, reached in November 2022, to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users’ locations.

The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history”.

“Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its users one thing — that it would no longer track their location once they opted out — but doing the opposite and continuing to track its users’ movements for its own commercial gain. That’s unacceptable, and we’re holding Google accountable with today’s settlement,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement.

Representatives for Google parent company Alphabet Inc. did not immediately respond to a message for comment. Google said last year that it fixed the problems several years ago.

As part of the settlement, in which Google admitted no wrongdoing, the company also agreed to a number of restrictions, including providing more transparency about location tracking, disclosing to users that their location information may be used for ad personalisation, and showing additional information to users when enabling location-related account settings.