Google has agreed to purge billions of data records to settle a lawsuit claiming that the tech giant secretly tracked personal information from more than 136 million people in the US. As per the allegations, Google collected data from millions of people surfing the internet through its Chrome web browser.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Monday (April 1) approved the terms of the settlement in the Oakland, California federal court.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers valued the accord at more than $5 billion, and as high as $7.8 billion. However, it may be noted that the tech giant is not paying anything in damages, but users may sue the company individually for damages.
What is class action lawsuit against Google all about?
The lawsuit started back in 2020 and covers millions of web users who used private browsing in Google since June 1, 2016. The case was filed after several Google users reported that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps let the Alphabet unit improperly track individuals who set Google’s Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode.
They argued that this transformation rendered Google an “unaccountable repository of information,” allowing the tech company to gather data on their friends, preferred foods, hobbies, shopping patterns, and the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they search for online.
Google settlement
As part of the settlement, Google will revise its disclosures regarding the information it collects during “private” browsing, a process that has already commenced. Additionally, it will enable Incognito users to block third-party cookies for a period of five years.
“The result is that Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions, and that Google will make less money from the data,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Additionally, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company was pleased to settle the lawsuit, which it always considered meritless.
“We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode,” Castaneda said. “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”
In a statement, David Boies, representing the plaintiffs, hailed the settlement as “a historic step in demanding transparency and accountability from dominant technology firms.” The preliminary agreement, reached in December, effectively forestalled a scheduled trial set for February 5, 2024.
However, specific terms of the settlement were not revealed at the time. It is anticipated that the plaintiffs’ legal team will subsequently pursue unspecified legal fees from Google. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is headquartered in Mountain View, California. The case, officially titled Brown et al v Google LLC et al, is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under docket number 20-03664.
