Google will pay the state of Texas $1.375 billion to resolve two privacy lawsuits claiming the tech giant tracks Texans’ personal location and maintains their facial recognition data, both without there consent, Bloomberg Law reported.

Google announced the settlement Friday, ending yearslong battles with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the state’s strict laws on user data.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

The settlement rivals the $1.4 billion Meta opted to pay Texas last year to resolve facial recognition claims involving its Facebook and Instagram platforms. That agreement, which involved just one case, was the largest ever obtained from a suit by a single state.

The two billion dollar settlements are part of a broader war against Big Tech by Paxton, who has touted his wins in a bid to challenge John Cornyn for US Senate. Paxton’s office has pending privacy or deceptive trade practices claims against TikTok Inc., Allstate Corp, and General Motors LLC.

Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton reported: Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a $1.375 billion settlement in principle with Google, delivering a historic win for Texans’ data privacy and security rights and marking the highest recovery nationwide against Google for any attorney general’s enforcement of state privacy laws.

In 2022, Attorney General Paxton sued Google for unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data. After years of aggressive litigation, Attorney General Paxton agreed to settle Texas’s data-privacy claims against Google for an amount that far surpasses any other state’s claims for similar violations. 

To date, no state has attained a settlement against Google for similar data-privacy violations grater than $93 million. Even a multistage coalition that included forty states secured just $391 billion – almost a billion dollars less than Texas’ recovery. 

The Verge reported: Google is set to pay $1.375 billion to settle claims of data privacy violations brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to a press release. 

Texas filed two lawsuits in 2022 against Google for “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data,” the release says. Before now, no single state has “attained a settlement against Google for similar data-privacy violations greater than $93 million.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product polices we have long since changed.” Google spokesperson José Castañeda tells The Verge. “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.88 trillion company and alter its power over the internet, The New York Times reported.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a 115-page ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web.

The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” said Judge Brinkema.

CNN reported: Google has illegally built “monopoly power” with its web advertising business, a federal judge in Virginia has ruled, siding with the Justice Department in a landmark case against the tech giant that could reshape the basic economics running a modern website.

The ruling that Google violated antitrust law marks the US government’s second major court victory over Google in less that a year amid claims the company had illegally monopolized key parts of the internet ecosystem, including online search. And it is the third such decision since a federal jury in December 2023 found that Google proprietary app store is also an illegal monopoly.

Taken together, the trio of decisions highlights the breadth the trouble Google faces, raising the prospect of sweeping penalties that could reshape multiple aspects of its business, through ongoing and expected appeals will likely take years to play out.

Gizmodo reported: Google is starting to have a monopoly on getting called out for having a monopoly. For the second time in under one year, the tech giant has been deemed to be operating an illegal monopoly, this time for its online advertising technology.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued 115-page ruling on Thursday that found Google violated antitrust laws to establish firm hold over the online advertising space, allowing the company to charge higher prices and keep a larger portion of ad sales.

In his ruling, Judge Brinkema said that Google was “willingly acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” over parts of the web advertising business by connecting its ad server business, DoubleClick, used by publishers to sell ads on their platforms, to its ad exchange operations, Google AdX, which sells ad space off auction-style to the highest bidder.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has announced its largest-ever acquisition, entering into a deal to buy New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz, making it a part of its Google Cloud division. This is the company’s second attempt to buy Wiz after talks stalled last year at a lower $23 billion evaluation. The Verge reported.

Wiz is a fast-growing Israeli-founded startup that works with companies like Microsoft and Amazon to provide cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. The company was valued at $12 billion in May 2024, which reportedly climbed to $16 billion later in the year in an equity offering to employees, and has been working towards an initial public offering (IPO) in the months since the previous acquisition fell through.  

Should the deal receive regulatory approval, it will easily outsize the $12.5 billion paid by Google for Motorola Mobility in 2012.

“We expect this change to enable us to execute and innovate even faster,” said Wiz cofounder and CEO Assaf Rappaport in a blog post. “Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: it will accelerate our rate of innovation after than what we could achieve as a standalone company.”

TechCrunch reported: Tuesday’s big news that Google is acquiring security startup Wiz for a record-breaking $32 billion comes with a big qualifier. Google says it will position Wiz as a “multicloud” offering, meaning Wiz will not be a Google-only shop.

The reality is that Google had no choice but to do this, and a close look at the reasons behind the decision also highlights Google’s weak spots in the months ahead.

Wiz brings a massive customer list to Google. As of today, the startup has already reached an annual revenue rate of $700 million. Before the news broke on Tuesday, it was on track for that to grow to $1 billion.

“Before the news broke” is the operative phrase here. Google and Wiz surely hope the acquisition will create an interesting new funnel of customers and revenue, but first and foremost, both will need to ensure they keep the existing customers from shopping around for another security provider.

CNBC reported: Google on Tuesday signed an “definitive agreement” to acquire Wiz, a New York-based cloud security startup, for $32 billion in an all cash deal.

The deal, Google’s largest ever, will bolster the company’s security technology in a world of advancing artificial intelligence and cybersecurity threats. Wiz will become a part of the company’s cloud business, and Google said it expects the deal to close in 2026.

“Google Cloud is a leader in cloud infrastructure, with deep AI expertise and a track record of industry-leading security innovation,” Google said in a release. “Bringing all this to Wiz will help make their solutions even better and more scalable, benefiting customers and partners across all major clouds.”