Google to pay Indiana $20 million to resolve privacy suit

Indiana's state attorney General Todd Rokita has announced that Google will pay Indiana $20 million to resolve the state’s lawsuit against the technology giant over allegedly deceptive location tracking practices.

Rokita had filed a separate lawsuit against Google when negotiations between the company and a coalition of state attorneys general stalled, he said. Those states agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with the company in November.

Indiana’s lawsuit alleged Google uses location data to build detailed user profiles and target ads. It alleged that the company has deceived and misled users about its practices since at least 2014.

As a result of the separate lawsuit, Indiana received about twice as much money as it would have under the deal with the 40 states in the coalition, Rokita said.

States began investigating after a 2018 Associated Press story that 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.”

Google however did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the deal with Indiana, claiming it had released tools to help users manage their data and minimize the data it collects and other features for more transparency.