Google will pay a record $391.5 million privacy settlement.
The tech giant will fork out the eye-watering sum after 40 US states claimed that it had tracked the location of users who opted out of location services on their devices.
Google has been told to be transparent about location tracking in the future and to develop a web page telling people about the data it collects.
The case is the largest multi-state settlement in US history.
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement: “Consistent with improvements we've made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago.”
Location services help the company generate $200 billion in annual advertising revenue and knowledge of a user’s location help advertisers target products.
Oregon Attorney-General Ellen Rosenblum – who led the case with Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson – said: “For years Google has prioritised profit over its users’ privacy.
“It has been crafty and deceptive.
“Consumers thought they had turned off their location-tracking features on Google - but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.”
The attorneys general said that Google had been misleading consumers about location tracking since at least 2014, breaking state consumer-protection laws.
The company has been instructed to significantly improve user controls and the way it discloses locating tracking from 2023.
Google had agreed to pay Arizona $85 million last month over similar issues concerning how it gathers location data.
Texas, Indiana, Washington and the District of Columbia had taken legal action against the firm in January.
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