By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Alphabet stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) fell 2.6% Monday after states sued the company on charges Google illegally tracked users even when it did not have their explicit consent.
Widespread selloff in the broader market was also adding to the pressure on the stock.
Indiana, Texas, Washington state and the District of Columbia have alleged in separate lawsuits that Google deceived users from at least 2014 to 2019 by leading them to believe that turning off location history settings would make the service stop tracking their locations. A user’s location could still be tracked by Google unless they also turned off settings in the web and app activity section, the attorney generals argued.
DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine began investigating Google's practices after a 2018 Associated Press report said that Google "records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to."
"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," Google told tech news platform CNET.
Cases related to privacy and using customer data to sell them to advertisers aren’t new to Google or for Facebook-parent Meta Platforms.
Arizona had earlier pursued a similar case against Google.