Arizona's AG: Google will pay $85M to resolve the state's consumer privacy lawsuit that claims it surreptitiously collects users' location data for targeted ads
Context & Ripple Effects
This settlement closes out the 2020 lawsuit in which Arizona's attorney general alleged Google kept collecting Android location data even after users switched tracking off — one of the first single-state suits aimed squarely at that gap between user settings and data collection.
The $85M payout lands mid-streak: weeks earlier Google settled with Australia's ACCC for $42.7M over misleading Android users about location collection (that August deal), and weeks later it agreed to the record $391.5M settlement with 40 state AGs, followed by California's $93M settlement in September 2023. Arizona is the template case the others echo.
First-order effects
- Arizona recovers $85M from Google, ending a two-and-a-half-year-old consumer privacy suit without litigation over whether 'off' settings actually stopped location collection for ads.
- Google exits its first major US state-level location-privacy fight while still carrying exposure to the parallel multistate and international claims over the same conduct.
Second-order effects
- The Arizona result hands other attorneys general a priced precedent: within six weeks, 40 states extracted nearly five times as much in the record $391.5M deal, and California and Australia's ACCC followed with their own nine-figure and eight-figure settlements.
- Each settlement validates the same legal claim — that opt-out controls did not stop commercial location tracking — so regulators can reuse the playbook rather than re-litigate the facts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, per-jurisdiction privacy settlements become Google's standard cost of doing business for ad-targeting data practices, shifting the enforcement burden to state AGs and foreign regulators in the absence of comprehensive federal privacy law.
- Serial payouts also push the real fix upstream: making location settings behave as labeled, since repeated settlements signal that the underlying consent architecture, not any single lawsuit, is what regulators keep pricing.
The trend: State and national regulators are converting location-tracking consent failures into a rising series of standardized privacy settlements with Google, turning opt-out integrity into a recurring line item for ad-funded platforms.