Washington AG Sues Google For Secretly Tracking Consumers’ Locations

(Olympia, WA) -- The Washington State Attorney General taking Google to court over alleged deception against consumers. Bob Ferguson accuses the company of secretly tracking the location of its customers, while also leading them to believe they had control over how their location data is collected and used. Ferguson claims that Google told users if they disabled the Location History feature, their data could not be stored, when in fact the company had other ways to track locations through Wi-Fi connections and app use.

This isn't the first time the state has clashed with the tech giant:

In December 2020, Ferguson and a bipartisan coalition of 38 attorneys general filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit asserted that  Google illegally leveraged its dominance in the online search and search advertising markets to stifle competing platforms, limiting specialized sellers’ ability to bring customers directly to their sites from general Google search results.

In 2018, Google paid Washington state $217,000 to resolve a lawsuit accusing the company of violating Washington campaign finance disclosure laws. The laws require political advertisers to maintain information about those who purchase advertising, and make that information available to the public.