Google reaches $93 million settlement in tracking location case

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Google has reached a $93 million settlement with the state of California to resolve allegations that it was collecting consumers’ data without their consent, the state’s attorney general said in a statement Thursday.

The California Department of Justice found that, after a multi-year investigation, the tech giant was “deceiving users by collecting, storing, and using their location data for consumer profiling and advertising purposes without informed consent.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta also said Google accepted taking future actions to prevent those practices. These actions would apply beyond California to other states, according to the proposed order.

A lawsuit by the Biden administration in January argued Google’s ad tech business should be broken up.

Google’s practices are under scrutiny by other lawmakers right now, too. A landmark antitrust trial against Google opened earlier this week, with sweeping allegations from the US DOJ that for years the company intentionally stifled competition challenging its massive search engine, accusing the tech giant of spending billions to operate an illegal monopoly that has harmed every computer and mobile device user in the United States.