"California Settles With Google Over Location Privacy Practices for $93 Million"
Google recently agreed to a $93 million settlement with the state of California over its location-privacy practices. The settlement follows a $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.” As part of the settlement, in which Google admitted no wrongdoing, Google 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 personalization, and showing additional information to users when enabling location-related account settings.