MAGA-aligned Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running in the 2026 U.S. Senate election in the Lone Star State, announced today that Google has signed a $1.375 billion settlement with the State of Texas. Paxton sued Google for “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito browsing activity, and biometric identifiers.”
Paxton wrote in the press release: “If Big Tech thinks they can get away with abusing user data and illegally spying on Texans without consequences, I will make sure they are proven wrong.”
I’m glad to announce that Google has now signed a historic $1.375 BILLION settlement with Texas—the largest ever, with a single state.
If Big Tech thinks they can get away with abusing user data and illegally spying on Texans without consequences, I will prove them wrong. pic.twitter.com/3ETdy2nra4
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 31, 2025
Note: This is not the first settlement Paxton has finalized with Google. In 2023, the company signed off on a $700 million settlement (anticompetitive practices concerning the Google Play Store) and a $8 million settlement (“deceptive advertisements”) with the State of Texas. And Google is not the only tech giant in Paxton’s sights: In 2024, the Texas AG got Meta to agree to a $1.4 billion settlement (illegal biometric data collection).
While several MAGA supporters congratulated Paxton, including influencer Laura Loomer (“Great work!”), more than one Texan asked the Attorney General, “Who gets the money?”
Another commenter, perhaps facetiously, asked the AG for the details on the presumably imminent payout: “Sweet,” they replied. “When do we Texans get our cut and will it be paper check or can we do direct deposit?”
A more skeptical responder wrote: “Money for the Texas @GOP to use???? Why does government act like this is a win for citizens when the funds are kept in house.”
Not a few commenters, impressed with the AG’s results and disenchanted with Big Tech’s overreach, suggested that Paxton keep suing Google for “illegally spying” on Americans until they go bankrupt.
Paxton will have to work hard to catch up, if he hopes to outpace Google’s revenue-generating machine. Consider the headline from Adweek yesterday: “Google Posts First-Ever $100B Quarter in Wake of Historic DOJ Antitrust Battles.”
In September, in what many saw as a lenient decision, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google could keep its Chrome browser, which had been targeted as a monopolistic tool before generative Artificial Intelligence emerged as a potent challenger. The decision came less than a year after Mehta ruled that Google illegally held a monopoly in internet search.