Google has reached an $8 million settlement with Texas over deceptive ads promoting the Pixel 4 smartphone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today.
Google’s trustworthiness as an advertiser was at issue after the tech giant “hired radio DJs to record and broadcast detailed testimonials about their personal experiences with the Pixel 4” but then “refused to give the DJs a phone they could use”, Paxton said.
The tech giant had previously settled claims from the Federal Trade Commission and six other states for about $9 million, and Paxton seemed proud that its “settlement alone will recover $8 million for the state of Texas.”
Google didn’t immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment, but a company spokesperson previously told TechCrunch that “we take advertising compliance seriously and have developed processes to ensure we’re in compliance with relevant regulations and industry standards.” [Update: Google spokesperson José Castañeda repeated Google’s prior statement to Ars, saying, “We are pleased to resolve this issue.”]
Paxton said that “if Google is going to advertise in Texas, their statements better be true.” He decided to take action to hold Google “accountable for lying to Texans for financial gain,” saying large companies should not expect “special treatment under the law.”
“Texas will do everything it can to protect our citizens and our state’s economy from false and misleading corporate advertising,” Paxton said.
It’s not the first time Texas has clashed with Google. In 2020, Texas along with other states filed a complaint against Google for allegedly “illegally enforcing monopolies on internet search and search advertising services” in 2020. That complaint is ongoing, with Google filing a memo this week asking the court to deny states’ requests to review select Google employees’ communications with its attorneys.
More recently, in 2022, Texas sued Google, “alleging that the tech giant unlawfully captured and used the biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining their informed consent,” according to a press release. At the time, Paxton compared Google to a “modern eye of Sauron.”
