Attorneys General in Texas, Indiana, Washington and Washington DC filed suit against Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Monday, alleging that the search giant deceived users into giving up their location data, even after they had opted out of tracking.
The suit claims Google has been misleading users about the privacy protections afforded by their settings since at least 2014 through 2019. Additionally, the complaints charge Google with employing "dark patterns," or interface tricks that make it difficult or frustrating to entirely opt out of location tracking, violating state and D.C. consumer protection laws.
"Google's misleading, ambiguous, and incomplete descriptions of these settings all but guarantee that consumers will not understand when their location is collected and retained by Google or for what purposes," reads the D.C. lawsuit.
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine led the filing on behalf of the other states. Racine cited a 2018 Associated Press report as grounds for his office's near two-year investigation into Google's location tracking practices and the subsequent allegations made in the suit.
"This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states," Racine told the Washington Post, adding that the suit could serve as a warning to other tech behemoth's who might be employing similar design tricks to those of Google.
"The time for trickery over profits is over," he said.
"The Attorneys General are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings," said Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda in a statement. "We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight."
Castaneda highlighted recent efforts by the company to give users more control over their location data, such as auto-deletion of their location history and incognito mode for Google Maps, among other changes.
Monday's motion against Google comes at a time when attorneys general are increasingly at the forefront of a bipartisan effort to reign in tech behemoths in lieu of decisive congressional action.
For instance, Arizona filed a nearly identical claim to Mondays in May 2020. That claim similarly alleged that the many layers of Google's interface made it "impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google's collection of location information."
Timothy J. Thomason, the judge in that case, denied Arizona's request for a ruling against Google, claiming that most consumers should expect their data is being collected in some way even if they never turn on their location history.
Regardless, Google faces a far more imposing legal fight in Federal court regardless of the outcome of Monday's suits.
In October 2020, The United States Justice Department filed suit against the tech giant for violating antitrust laws. Meanwhile, last September, Bloomberg reported that the Department was preparing a second claim against the company, targeting its digital ad business.
Thirty-eight states, meanwhile, filed a motion against Google, alleging the company abused its market share to obtain dominance in cars, TVs, speakers, and other smart devices. That case was consolidated with the federal one for the purposes of discovery.
The trial is set to begin in September 2023.