Google will pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations that it collected users’ biometric data without their consent, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday.
The settlement resolves a 2022 lawsuit in which Paxton accused the tech giant of unlawfully harvesting millions of biometric identifiers—including voiceprints and facial geometry—through products such as Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won.”
The Texas attorney general’s office called the agreement the largest settlement ever reached by a state with Google over data-privacy violations.
The announcement comes less than a year after Texas secured a similar $1.4 billion settlement from Meta over claims the company misused biometric data without user consent.
