OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson will file a lawsuit against Google on Monday that says Google continued to track users even after they turned off location tracking settings.
Ferguson’s lawsuit says Google deceptively leads users to believe they have control over how their location data is collected and used.
“In reality, consumers cannot effectively prevent Google from collecting, storing and profiting from their location data,” a news release from the AG’s office said.
The AG’s office said location data is key to Google’s advertising business, so Google has a major stake in continuing to access it.
Even when users turn off location history in their account settings, Google continues to collect location data, which gives the company the ability to target ads to users based on that data, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit says Google’s practices — including hard-to-find location settings, misleading descriptions of location settings and repeated reminders to enable location settings — make it nearly impossible for users to stop the company from collecting their location data.
Google made nearly $150 billion from advertising in 2020.