Google Agrees to Pay $39.9 Million Over Lawsuit for Deceptive Location Monitoring Practices

Google can pay Washington state $39.9 million (almost Rs. 330 crore) to resolve a lawsuit accusing the Alphabet unit of deceptive shoppers about its location monitoring practices, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson stated on Thursday.

The settlement resolves claims that Google deceived folks into believing they managed how the search and promoting firm collected and used their private knowledge.

In actuality, the state stated Google was capable of acquire and revenue from that knowledge even when shoppers disabled its monitoring expertise on their smartphones and computer systems, invading shoppers’ privateness.

A consent decree filed on Wednesday in King County Superior Court requires Google to be extra clear about its monitoring practices, and supply a extra detailed “Location Technologies” webpage describing them.

“Today’s resolution holds one of the most powerful corporations accountable for its unethical and unlawful tactics,” Ferguson stated in an announcement.

Google, primarily based in Mountain View, California, denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

In November, Google agreed to pay $391.5 million (almost Rs. 3,240 crore) to resolve related allegations by 40 US states.

Some states together with Washington selected to sue Google on their very own about its monitoring practices. Arizona reached an $85 million (almost Rs. 703 crore) settlement with Google final October in a kind of instances.

In response to the Washington settlement, Google referred to its earlier assertion on the multistate accord, the place it stated it had addressed numerous considerations raised by regulators, together with “outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”

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