Google hit with $425M in privacy suit
The ruling followed a lawsuit brought by users who accused the tech giant of accessing their mobile devices to harvest, store, and exploit personal data in breach of its Web & App Activity privacy promises. Plaintiffs had originally sought over $31 billion in damages.
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A U.S. federal court has ordered Google to pay $425 million (£316 million) after finding the company violated users’ privacy by gathering data even when account holders had disabled a tracking feature.
The ruling followed a lawsuit brought by users who accused the tech giant of accessing their mobile devices to harvest, store, and exploit personal data in breach of its Web & App Activity privacy promises. Plaintiffs had originally sought over $31 billion in damages.
Google disagreed with the decision, saying it misrepresents how its systems function. “Our privacy tools give people control over their information. When someone turns off personalisation, we respect that choice. We intend to appeal,” a spokesperson told the BBC.
A jury concluded that Google was liable on two of three privacy-related claims but determined the company had not acted with intentional malice. The class-action case, filed in July 2020, represents roughly 98 million users and 174 million devices.
Google maintains that when Web & App Activity is disabled, businesses using Google Analytics may still collect site and app usage information. However, the company insists that this data does not personally identify individuals and complies with user privacy settings.
In a separate development, shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, surged over 9% on Wednesday after a U.S. federal judge ruled that the firm could retain its Chrome browser. However, District Judge Amit Mehta required Google to share search data with competitors and prohibited exclusive contracts, in a case centred on the company’s dominance as the default search provider on Android, Chrome, and devices made by Apple.
