Google To Pay $155 Million In Settlements Over Location Tracking

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google agreed to pay $155 million to settle claims by California and private plaintiffs that the search engine company misled consumers about how it tracks their locations, and used their data without consent. Both settlements resolve claims that the Alphabet unit deceived people into believing they maintained control over how Google collected and used their personal data. The company was accused of being able to "profile" people and target them with advertising even if they turned off their "Location History" setting, and deceive people about their ability to block ads they did not want.

The California settlement requires Google to pay $93 million, and disclose more about how it tracks people's whereabouts and uses data it collects. Money from Google's $62 million settlement with private plaintiffs would, after deducting legal fees, go to court-approved nonprofit groups that track internet privacy concerns. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said this made sense because it was "infeasible" to distribute money to the approximately 247.7 million U.S. adults with mobile devices. "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," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. "That's unacceptable."

The large fines and settlements just keep coming

[chrism238]

Obviously the fines aren't large enough, as the monetized value of personal data is clearly still greater than the fines.

Yawn

[sconeu]

California: Pay $93MM
Private Suits: Pay $62MM
Google: [Rummages through seat cushions] Here ya go.

Key point: disclose, not stop

[SuperKendall]

The summary notes that they have to just disclose more about how the collect location data... not that they have to stop at all!

Re: Key point: disclose, not stop

[SleepingEye]

Apple does the same too. Turn off wifi and bt? Not really. Lawsuits for everyone!

pennies on the dollar

[Virtucon]

Google in 2022 made over $200B in revenue. This $155M is not even one-tenth of one percent of that.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Revenue is the wrong number to compare, because this comes out of profit.

Just assume that...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

..."turn off" & "block" simply mean hide it from you & you only. All the data collecting, tracking, profiling, trading your data to anyone who'll pay, including criminal organisations will continue relentlessly as usual.

Location data required

[Jarik C-Bol]

I hate how Google has shifted to a model where you have to share your precise location to get useful results. I remember in the early days, you could go to your search settings and put in a zip code, and search results took that as your location, when searching for local businesses and services. Now, that feature is long gone, and if you want usable results, you have to turn on location sharing. And if you don’t, the search results are more garbage than usual.
For example, I lived in Texas for a long time, but 3 years ago moved to Montana, and *to this day* google gives me results for the Dallas/FortWorth/Austin/Houston area, rather than my actual location in Montana. Which is dumb, because they are clearly not even using cached old decent ip address geolocation, as I didn’t live in that part of Texas, and had more accurate results there, while still not sharing my exact location with google.
And yes, I have followed all their “tips” for getting better results, like pinning local locations on Google maps, to no avail, any time I search without typing in my city name and state, I get eastern Texas results.