Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) opened a new tab after a federal jury ruled on Wednesday that the company must pay $425 million for violating customers’ privacy by collecting data for millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature in their Google account. The decision follows a trial in a federal court in San Francisco on claims that Google violated privacy guarantees under its Web & App Activity setting by accessing users’ mobile devices over an eight-year period in order to gather, store, and exploit their data.
The users had demanded damages totaling over $31 billion. On two of the three allegations of privacy violations made by the plaintiffs, the jury found Google accountable. Google was not entitled to any punitive damages since the jury determined that the company had not behaved maliciously. According to Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda, the company intends to appeal. “This decision misunderstands how our products work,” Castaneda stated. “People have control over their data thanks to our privacy tools, and we respect their decision to disable personalization.” In a statement, users’ attorney David Boies said the group was “obviously very pleased with the verdict the jury returned.”
The class action lawsuit, which was filed in July 2020, asserted that Google’s relationship with applications including Uber, Venmo, and Meta’s (META.O) opens new tab Instagram that use specific Google analytics services allowed Google to continue collecting user data even after the setting was turned off.
Google said throughout the trial that the information gathered was “nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations.” According to Google, the information was unrelated to any user’s identity or Google accounts. The complaint, which involves about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices, was certified as a class action by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg.
Other privacy lawsuits have been filed against Google, including one earlier this year in which the corporation settled with Texas for allegedly violating the state’s privacy rules, paying close to $1.4 billion. In order to resolve a lawsuit alleging that it tracked users who believed they were browsing quietly, including in “Incognito” mode, Google agreed in April 2024 to delete billions of data records of customers’ private browsing habits.
