A federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet’s Google, must pay $425 million for invading users’ privacy by continuing to gather data for tens of millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature of their Google account.
The decision comes after a trial within the federal court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users’ mobile devices to gather, save, and use their data, violating privacy assurances under its Web & App Activity setting.
The users had been in search of greater than $31 billion in damages.
The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs.
The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.
A spokesperson for Google confirmed the decision.
Google had denied any wrongdoing.
The category motion lawsuit, filed in July 2020, claimed Google continued to gather users’ data even with the setting turned off through its relationship with apps reminiscent of Uber, Venmo and Meta’s Instagram that use certain Google analytics services.
At trial, Google said the collected data was “nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations.”
Google said the information was not related to users’ Google accounts or any individual user’s identity.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg certified the case as a category motion covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
Google has faced other privacy lawsuits, including one earlier this yr where it paid nearly $1.4 billion in a settlement with Texas over allegations the corporate violated the state’s privacy laws.
Google in April 2024 agreed to destroy billions of knowledge records of users’ private browsing activities to settle a lawsuit that alleged it tracked individuals who thought they were browsing privately, including in “Incognito” mode.
A federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet’s Google, must pay $425 million for invading users’ privacy by continuing to gather data for tens of millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature of their Google account.
The decision comes after a trial within the federal court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users’ mobile devices to gather, save, and use their data, violating privacy assurances under its Web & App Activity setting.
The users had been in search of greater than $31 billion in damages.
The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs.
The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.
A spokesperson for Google confirmed the decision.
Google had denied any wrongdoing.
The category motion lawsuit, filed in July 2020, claimed Google continued to gather users’ data even with the setting turned off through its relationship with apps reminiscent of Uber, Venmo and Meta’s Instagram that use certain Google analytics services.
At trial, Google said the collected data was “nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations.”
Google said the information was not related to users’ Google accounts or any individual user’s identity.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg certified the case as a category motion covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
Google has faced other privacy lawsuits, including one earlier this yr where it paid nearly $1.4 billion in a settlement with Texas over allegations the corporate violated the state’s privacy laws.
Google in April 2024 agreed to destroy billions of knowledge records of users’ private browsing activities to settle a lawsuit that alleged it tracked individuals who thought they were browsing privately, including in “Incognito” mode.
